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In my error I wanted to create a install media for a Mac not realizing that the drive I used already had data on it.

It was a FAT32 file system and then had HFS written to it. It has lost the volume and the drive letter association however the partitions and files are intact.

I have since used qphotorec.exe to backup the contents of the drive however I wanted to know if there is anyway to get the filesystem/drive back to the way it was before my stupidity.

The reason I want to restore is that the drive contains educational videos and have lost all folder structure and naming conventions for the courses as a part of the backup and have no logical order now. I know, not your problem but mine although any help using testdisk to revive my error would be awesome!

So far the log file for testdisk gave me the info below, but I am new to it and not sure what exactly I'm doing:

Analyse Disk \\.\PhysicalDrive2 - 1000 GB / 931 GiB - CHS 121597 255 63
Current partition structure:
Bad MAC partition, invalid block0 signature
read_part_mac: bad DPME signature

Any direction or help would be much appreciated. Thanks.

ricbax wrote: 09 Nov 2024, 16:30 In my error I wanted to create a install media for a Mac not realizing that the drive I used already had data on it.

It was a FAT32 file system and then had HFS written to it. It has lost the volume and the drive letter association however the partitions and files are intact.

Why should partitions and files be intact? The creation of installation media in the Microsoft windows world involves overwriting a device typically with gigabytes in a sector by sector manner. Everything written is gone where overwriting took place.

I have since used qphotorec.exe to backup the contents of the drive however I wanted to know if there is anyway to get the filesystem/drive back to the way it was before my stupidity.

In a windows world that is impossible. Overwritten is overwritten. Overwriting a device typically starts at the beginning where at least one FAT and the main directory is located.

The reason I want to restore is that the drive contains educational videos and have lost all folder structure and naming conventions for the courses as a part of the backup and have no logical order now. I know, not your problem but mine although any help using testdisk to revive my error would be awesome!

So far the log file for testdisk gave me the info below, but I am new to it and not sure what exactly I'm doing:

Analyse Disk \\.\PhysicalDrive2 - 1000 GB / 931 GiB - CHS 121597 255 63
Current partition structure:
Bad MAC partition, invalid block0 signature
read_part_mac: bad DPME signature

Any direction or help would be much appreciated. Thanks.

Running the standard procedure including deep search should not yield any result, the "p"-key ("list files") either not available or its use not showing the folder structures you know:
https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Step_By_Step

You might try out other software solutions or write your own to gather subdirectory information containing file and folder names and link this information to usable result files of (Q)-Photorec.

I appreciate the response to my issue.

My solution was found here: https://www.reddit.com/r/datarecovery/c ... _recovery/

Thank you for your feedback!
Check, if your videos can be played!
What has been overwritten by hfs-structures cannot be recovered.

Hello,
I wanted to ask if you tried using other data recovery tools alongside qphotorec, like Recuva or EaseUS, to see if they could help recover more of your folder structure or any lost data? I'd be interested to know if there were any better results with those.