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The subject is actually a bit inaccurate; I've been trying testdisk via several bootable USB vehicles. Just as background, I have a dead Windows 10 NTFS HDD with a corrupt MBR and with partitions that are somehow overlapping - testdisk hasn't been able to do much with that. But it can see the files, and all I'm interested in at this point is recovering recent files that aren't backed up elsewhere. So I tried:

Booting from a FreeDos bootable USB, with testdisk onboard. This worked! I'm able to see and copy files back to the USB. But the filenames are 8-character truncated, I assume b/c DOS. Tetdisk sees the original long filenames, DOS just doesn't copy them that way.

Booting from a SystemRescue image via USB. I'm not sure what this is doing, honestly. I run testdisk, it claims to be copying files but I'm not sure that it is - it's much faster to copy larger files than via the DOS usb, plus I don't see them when I enter the SystemRescue GUI afterward, nor can I even find the folder or files once the USB is being read by a Windows machine (sadly, my limited linux experience is almost 20y old, that doesn't aid my troubleshooting in this case).

Any suggestions on where I can go from here would be helpful. Thanks much in advance!

underchuckle wrote: 08 Jan 2021, 14:06 Booting from a SystemRescue image via USB. I'm not sure what this is doing, honestly. I run testdisk, it claims to be copying files but I'm not sure that it is - it's much faster to copy larger files than via the DOS usb, plus I don't see them when I enter the SystemRescue GUI afterward, nor can I even find the folder or files once the USB is being read by a Windows machine (sadly, my limited linux experience is almost 20y old, that doesn't aid my troubleshooting in this case).

I can't help you with that as Testdisk asks you where to save the files.

I'm saving to the USB stick w/the SystemRescue image, that's my only option. The folders available are the systemrescue folders that testdisk can see (boot, etc, dev, and the like). I pick one of them as a save lcoation for recovered files, but it doesn't matter which one I choose, files don't show up. I assume that's b/c those folders are read-only or have different permissions.

I also tried to insert another USB stick, thinking I could save files there, but that other stick is my freedos stick, and while the SystemRescue testdisk 'sees' it, it's not an available choice as a save-to location.

Use another stick. Format it with a FAT32 partition, give it a label like "recover", write an empty file on the partition like recov.txt to simplify recognition later.
The retry your recovery. You might have to manually mount the stick to enable writing on it. You can try to create any garbage file on the stick to check if you have writing rights.

That's how inexperienced I am w/linux these days. Once I re-familiarized with how to get an external HDD mounted correctly, I was able to copy files to it. Everything seems to be proceeding OK, fingers crossed. Thanks for your help!

The more you suffer with a defective drive the easier you get into the matters. Especially when had linux experience before.