cgsecurity.org

Hi,

I'm having this exact same problem: viewtopic.php?t=7906
I'm trying to recover a specific folder containing several folders that got deleted from my hard drive; however, PhotoRec isn't giving me the option to search for unallocated space only.

Thank you!

Which file system do you want to search for deleted files?
Did you choose the whole disk in the partition selection menu?

I've tried both:
rdisk > no partition (whole) > other (FAT/NTFS/…)
rdisk > HPFS - NTFS > other (FAT/NTFS/…)
and on both ways I don't get the free / whole menu that I've found in the PhotoRec step-by-step.

RDISK sounds like you are using a Macintosh computer (I don't have one). It seems that you selected a whole disk and not a partition.

Right, it's a Macintosh computer.
I only get the option to choose between No partition and one partition labelled as my hard drive's name (it seems like both are referring to the whole disk).
Once I select either option I get to choose between [ext2/ext3] and [other]. And whichever option I choose, I don't get the unallocated option, it gets me directly to choose the folder to store the recovered files to.

PhotoRec can search files from

from the whole partition (useful if the filesystem is corrupted) or
from the unallocated space only (available for ext2/ext3/ext4, FAT12/FAT16/FAT32 and NTFS). With this option only deleted files are recovered.

source: https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec_Step_By_Step

You did not answer my question about the file system you were using.

To be able to search the unallocated space (this space only exists within a file system) Photorec needs a file system as listed above.

If there is no file system or a file system where Photorec does not understand its way to organize data within
Photorec cannot distinguish allocated space from unallocated space.

Oh I'm sorry, I thought the only choice in file system was the two categories (ext2/ext2 and other - FAT/NTFS/HFS/...).
The file system that I've been choosing is the second one (other) because it's a hard drive so the files are NTFS.

I've recovered my lost files!!
It took a while but it was definitely worth it. Given that I hadn't the option to search unallocated space, I searched the whole disk but reduced the search time by specifying the file types I needed to recover (PSD and PDF). Now I'm almost done with sorting out these recovered files.