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Recover NTFS formated on EXT4

Posted: 18 Jun 2014, 13:41
by alordiel
Hello,

By the will of the unknown God of all mistakes I have installed Linux Mint and formatted my windows drive to 900 GB(NTFS) into EXT4. Well the case is a bit complicated but that is the result.
Now I run only on live USB and had free 900GB on external drive. In the moment I'm running photorec and I'm recovering some of the lost files. But this is not working for me, it is recovering files with self-generated name in random folder. It will be imposable for me to find what I need.
Still wandering if there is another way.
I'm not familiar at all with testdisk and don't know what are its full capabilities. Please guide me what I can do in this case. What I need to read.


Thanks in advance.

Re: Recover NTFS formated on EXT4

Posted: 18 Jun 2014, 14:09
by Fiona
You can run TestDisk / Quick Search and Deeper Search, to have a try to find your previous NTFS-Partition.
If testdisk will find it, please mark your NTFS partition and press p to have a try to list your files.
Ext2/3/4 file system writes backups of the superblock over your whole file system.
In some cases, the underlying file system was damaged.
Some information about the backups of a superblock:
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Advanced ... SuperBlock
In case, if your files aren't listed and your partition will be not found, please let me know.

Fiona

Re: Recover NTFS formated on EXT4

Posted: 18 Jun 2014, 14:42
by alordiel
Thanks for the fast respond. Here are some screenshots on what i see so far.
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1.png (36.98 KiB) Viewed 2716 times
2.png
2.png (44.52 KiB) Viewed 2716 times
3.png
3.png (24.71 KiB) Viewed 2716 times
I'm not sure if there is something as NTFS partition found as it should be on the place of this "Unknown" on the first screenshot but so far there is a "Deep search" running. What i can do once it is finished?

Re: Recover NTFS formated on EXT4

Posted: 18 Jun 2014, 15:02
by Fiona
Please finish Deeper Search.
TestDisk will reduce the result to the recoverable partitions.
If you mark them, at the bottom of the screen you'll find information, what kind of file system it is.
You can watch it on your second screenshot.
If you find any NTFS-partition, you can press p to have a try to list your files.

Fiona

Re: Recover NTFS formated on EXT4

Posted: 19 Jun 2014, 07:10
by alordiel
Fiona, a billion THANKS from me... I just get to the point of recovering my files. It is all save and no issues so far, it seems that all my files weren't damaged. Thanks again for the help and for the support. Testdisk is great, you are great!!!