cgsecurity.org

Posted: **08 Aug 2022, 20:02**

I feel like a complete idiot here, but I was working on installing a second OS on a different drive and accidentally formatted my main windows partition to MacOS journaled HFS+. The drive is an NVME SSD.
I then went ahead and made an Ubuntu live flash drive, and I’ve been trying to recover the data. I ran testdisk and did some searching, it found the windows partition but then said that it couldn’t write it because it couldn’t find a valid file system. Then, I ran a deep search and found the boot partition, so I wrote that and restarted. I’m running PhotoRec onto a different drive so that hopefully I can get some files back, but it doesn’t seem like it’s finding anything which is really alarming. What is there left for me to do? I’m happy to provide any information you need to help me figure this out, I just feel like I’m at a dead end.

Posted: **09 Aug 2022, 07:35**

0. If you have not provided a Testdisk log file yet, please post your log file - you can attach it to your post.

1.Which operating systems can be booted from your computer where the incident happened?
List them all!

2. Which version of Testdisk do you use?

3.Do you prevent/reduce write access to the failed drive/file system?
[Yes/no]

4. If yes, how is that done?

[ ] I removed the failed drive and connected it to another computer (not linux) as an external drive => risky
[ ] I am using a live linux from a USB stick on the machine with the broken drive => good
[ ] I am booting a linux system on a different system and connect the drive externally once the linux finished booting => good

5. Is the broken drive a drive where an operating system resides on or is it a data drive?

6. What technology is your disk (HDD, SDD, USB stick, Compact Flash card, SD card,...)?

7. What is the size of your disk?

8. Who is the maker of your failed drive?

9. What is the model?

10. Is the drive something you bought "naked" one or does it come with a housing and a connector for a computer (p.e. like "WD My Passort")?

11. If possible, provide a logfile from smartmontools!
Instructions:
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=10910

12. What has been the partitioning scheme used on the failed drive (MBR (old partition table style), GPT, Superfloppy)

13. How many partitions have been on the broken drive, what was their size, what was their file system?

14. Is your drive visible in your operating system (Windows: Disk management, Linux use lsblk command, get information using hdparm command)

15. Is the partition scheme containing your partitions still visible?

14. Describe the supposed event when your system went from "OK" to "broken"!

15. Is your disk showing signs of failures such as
-clicking noises
-permanent reboot (spindel speed up followed by a stop)
-no spindel speed up

?

16. Do you use encryption, if yes, which one?

17. If you use encryption, what is the scope?

[ ] full drive
[ ] partition
[ ] file container
[ ] single files

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Accidentally deleted my main windows partition, and may have made it worse

Accidentally deleted my main windows partition, and may have made it worse

Re: Accidentally deleted my main windows partition, and may have made it worse