ran mkfs.exfat on NTFS hard drive - lost all files

How to use TestDisk to recover lost partition
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iaminpanic
Posts: 7
Joined: 25 Jan 2024, 14:11

Re: ran mkfs.exfat on NTFS hard drive - lost all files

#11 Post by iaminpanic »

Hello, recuperation.

In fact, I had gotten testdisk from my package manager, and did not even realise photorec came along with it. So I went to the website and downloaded testdisk again :D

Anyway, I have successfully created the backup .img file from the problematic hard drive, and used dd to clone it to another one. Am now using photorec to retrieve as much as possible.

So far so good, I suppose.

Code: Select all

Pass 1 - Reading sector   49937280/3907782656, 6344 files found
Elapsed time 0h27m07s - Estimated time to completion 34h54m51
jpg: 5946 recovered
zip: 145 recovered
pdf: 113 recovered
doc: 76 recovered
txt: 29 recovered
lnk: 8 recovered
riff: 6 recovered
This will take a while. Thank you very much, again, for all help. I'll report back to close the issue as soon as this is done.
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iaminpanic
Posts: 7
Joined: 25 Jan 2024, 14:11

Re: ran mkfs.exfat on NTFS hard drive - lost all files

#12 Post by iaminpanic »

Hello!

Just wanted to say photorec was a tremendous help. It recovered many, many files, albeit with no file structure. But that is okay given the situation. Thank you very much for the help and these tools. All the best!
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