Somehow deleted a missing partition instead of recovering 1

How to use TestDisk to recover lost partition
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allanonmage
Posts: 6
Joined: 14 Jul 2012, 21:18

Somehow deleted a missing partition instead of recovering 1

#1 Post by allanonmage »

Hi there! First post an all that jazz. I'm new to Testdisk, but am generally techie and work in a specialized tech support role. Feel free to correct my vocabulary and learn me some good stuff :)

My problem:
Android cell phone memory card deleted/corrupted partions on the card. I used Recuva by Piriform to get the data off, but would like to put things back together so I can get my voicemails. Normally they'd be stored to the phone and not the SD card, but the ROM I used had A2SD baked in and put all of the apps and their data on the SD card. Always nice to find this out after data problems, you know?

Phone: HTC EVO 4G
ROM: MikG 3.11
SD Card: 16GB Patriot class 10

There was a linux swap partition, the main data partition (~14.xGB), and a third partition, one I suspect that had the apps and app data on it.

The phone is not able to mount and/or has problems mounting the partitions. There's a little bug in this ROM when you shut it down that you can lose the lockscreen if you have problems with A2SD or your SD card (or do something stupid or have a glitch with those same subsystems). I'm thinking what happened with me was the phone or the SD card had a problem and my most recent shutdown triggered the A2SD glitch. I've bandaided the phone together enough to get past the lockscreen, but b/c the A2SD was enabled, there's not much besides call or text that I can do with my phone. Not a big deal, I'll flash another ROM once I get everything squared away.

I've recovered the files off the main partition, but wanted to recover the damaged partitions so I could get to things like voicemails. I tried to use TestDisk to fix the partitions. I wasn't sure I was using the software correctly as it looked like it could see the partitions and stuff correctly, but wouldn't do the magic part (ie fix them). I found the wiki, a youtube video, and then this forum. For a completely random relation, I'm having a similar problem with instructions for this software as I am following instructions to install software on Linux: I'm sure the instructions are valid, but they don't allow for my circumstances which clearly don't follow/match the instructions. Of course, everyone's how-to is roughly the same, so I'm lost. I'm not sure if I'm not getting what they are throwing down, or there is some other mismatch, but it's frustrating.

I can get to the part where it sees the partitions (used to be 3, now it's 2) and if I just hit enter it would say no partition found or selected. I tried giving the large partition a * by pressing the right arrow key (they all otherwise had Ds) and let it do its thing and then rebooted. Now the drive is still unreadable by windows (same error asking me to format it) and if I go back within this software I only see the main partition: I do not see the swap partition nor the A2SD partition. Yet if I tell it to search I can see a "Linux" partition but no swap partition. (The screenshots below make for better explanations)

I didn't realize I had the option of deleting things or removing things with this software; I though it was a relatively straight forward tool to fix (and only fix) things. I'm not clear on how I should be using the software, and I'm not clear on how I broke things. I'd like to learn how to use the software in case I have to use it again in the future.

The machine I am using is a Fujitsu P1620, core 2 duo @1.2ghz, 2GB RAM, win7 pro 32bit, and the card is in a microSD card reader. I'll reply to this post with some screenshots for clarity.

Moving forward, I'd like to know what I can do to restore this cards partitions.
Last edited by allanonmage on 15 Jul 2012, 17:45, edited 3 times in total.

allanonmage
Posts: 6
Joined: 14 Jul 2012, 21:18

Re: Somehow deleted partition instead of recovering

#2 Post by allanonmage »

This is right after I tell it to analyze, post bork-age. This screen used to show 3 entries here. Now you can see it only shows 1.

Definition of bork if you didn't know:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bork

It prettymuch means break.
Attachments
step 1 - partitions found after analyze.png
step 1 - partitions found after analyze.png (11.41 KiB) Viewed 3390 times
Last edited by allanonmage on 15 Jul 2012, 17:11, edited 2 times in total.

allanonmage
Posts: 6
Joined: 14 Jul 2012, 21:18

Re: Somehow deleted partition instead of recovering

#3 Post by allanonmage »

This is after I tell it to quick search and select yes to allow it to find windows vista made partitions. This used to have 3 entries here as well. The third used to say Linux SWAP if memory serves. I'm not sure, but what we see here might be the Linux swap but just might not be labeled as such. Again, I'm not really sure what I'm looking at, that hunch is just from poking around and seeing things in different views.

If I hit left or right I can change the "D" to a "*" or a "P". If I hit P I can see what looks like my files (I haven't exhaustively searched through the results, but it looks legit on first glance).
Attachments
step 2 partition select page.png
step 2 partition select page.png (13.68 KiB) Viewed 3390 times
Last edited by allanonmage on 15 Jul 2012, 17:02, edited 1 time in total.

allanonmage
Posts: 6
Joined: 14 Jul 2012, 21:18

Re: Somehow deleted partition instead of recovering

#4 Post by allanonmage »

This is after I just hit enter in the previous screenshot. I expected the program to do its magic, not tell me it couldn't find the things I just saw it find. It was at this step I surmised I didn't know what I was doing and started looking for help.

And then just tried something and seemingly broke it :(
Attachments
step 3 no partition found page.png
step 3 no partition found page.png (10.11 KiB) Viewed 3390 times

allanonmage
Posts: 6
Joined: 14 Jul 2012, 21:18

Re: Somehow deleted partition instead of recovering

#5 Post by allanonmage »

If I go to the restore backup option in the second screenshot I posted, I get this one. It appears to have merged the current list with the "backup" list (In quotes b/c I don't understand what the backup is), and there are duplicates of what is and what was previously recorded.

Note that I didn't select anything to make it green, it popped up that way.
Attachments
step 4 restore backup.png
step 4 restore backup.png (15.45 KiB) Viewed 3390 times

allanonmage
Posts: 6
Joined: 14 Jul 2012, 21:18

Re: Somehow deleted a missing partition instead of recoverin

#6 Post by allanonmage »

Wow, I don't usually get ignored this hard unless it's from my Engineering team. Nice to know that the most popular software on the web, the one that everyone recommends, either doesn't work or has almost no support.

I mean: I'm either doing it wrong; or the software is not working the way it supposed to.

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