Restored file sizes fit only for smaller files

[Rava]

This is about a crashed NTFS partition that had Wind7 on it but also lots of private data - jpeg, png, mpeg-4, mp3, aac, epub, pdf, you name it. I only care about private files - Wind7 OS can be generically be reinstalled.

I used PhotoRec 7.1 to restore lost files.

To be able to track down files I wrote scripts that indexes all internal and external partitions by using find and ls.
The find gives the full path with all sub-folders and can help restoring lost folders hierarchies.
The ls does a ls -loaR --time-style="+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M" to include only owner (omitting group), file size and using a unified date+time format.

By having these lostpartition.ls.gz and lostpartition.find.gz I tried tracking down individual files in the numerous recup_dir directories by also first creating recup.ls.gz and recup.find.gz.

Looking for a specific file by searching for its exact size like so

Code: Select all

zgrep " 1234 " recup.ls.gz

finds a small mp3 okay.

But all larger mp3, aac or mp4 / mpeg4 fail. Are none of these larger files restored by PhotoRec 7.1, or are all restored as several files to be concatenated e.g like so

Code: Select all

cat part1.mp4 part2.mp4 >complete.mp4

For now it also has found all png or gif or jpeg files with the file sizes matching exactly. Processing more than 320000 files in more than 640 folders takes its time, might be larger files also are not to be found by searching for their individual file size, might be failure restoring larger files only applies to aac, mp3, m4.

[cgrenier]

Larger files are more often fragmented.
For some file formats, PhotoRec can not find the exact filesize.
Note that PhotoRec 7.2-WIP gets better results than 7.1 for mp3 by example.

[Rava]

Note that PhotoRec 7.2-WIP gets better results than 7.1 for mp3 by example.

Is there info to be found of what 7.2-WIP can do better than 7.1?

And does 7.2-WIP exists as Linux x86-64 binary, or must it be compiled manually?

[recuperation]

There is a beautiful website out there, called "cgsecurity.org".
You won't believe it, but there is written information out there:

https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Download

The current changes can be find following the github links there.
There is currently no understable documentation about the changes available yet.

You have to compile the sources yourself or use a distribution like Gparted and Knoppix.

[Rava]

There is a beautiful website out there, called "cgsecurity.org".
You won't believe it, but there is written information out there:
[…]
The current changes can be find following the github links there.
There is currently no understable documentation about the changes available yet.

So there is written information out there currently, but still no understandable documentation about the changes. Of course I referred only to understandable info, wanting not-understandable documentation would be weird.

You have to compile the sources yourself or use a distribution like Gparted and Knoppix.

I tried compiling 7.1 - console only version, but it failed due to QT stuff missing. Do I report such issues in the forum if the same should occur trying compiling 7.2-WIP?
Why does a console only version need QT?

[recuperation]

I tried compiling 7.1 - console only version, but it failed due to QT stuff missing. Do I report such issues in the forum if the same should occur trying compiling 7.2-WIP?
Why does a console only version need QT?

A console only version does not need QT.

[cgrenier]

https://github.com/cgsecurity/testdisk/ ... 165184194d is one of the commit that improve mp3 recovery in PhotoRec 7.2-WIP.
Pre-compiled 7.2-WIP binaries can be downloaded from https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Download
If you tried to compile TestDisk & PhotoRec without Qt5, QPhotoRec will not be compiled but it doesn't prevent testdisk, photorec and fidentify to be generated.

[Rava]

If you tried to compile TestDisk & PhotoRec without Qt5, QPhotoRec will not be compiled but it doesn't prevent testdisk, photorec and fidentify to be generated.

I presume I need to tell the compile script that in some manner?
And I also presume in one of the readme-files that this parameter for compiling testdisk, photorec and fidentify but omitting QPhotoRec is named and described?

When I tried compiling it, at one time it did just stopped complaining about the missing QT stuff.

[recuperation]

If you tried to compile TestDisk & PhotoRec without Qt5, QPhotoRec will not be compiled but it doesn't prevent testdisk, photorec and fidentify to be generated.

I guess Qt5 is not meant as a parameter in Testdisk.
You have to add the software Qt5 to your development environment to provide necessary libraries I guess. You would compile afterwards then.