chkdsk /f consequences

[baskak]

hello,

i had an error on my usb hdd, resulting in "Windows prompts: The drive is not formatted, do you want to format it now?". i checked it with ubuntu 12.04, and it recommended using chkdsk /f on windows (win7). which i did. and now it's an empty ntfs drive (apart from $RECYCLE.BIN which indeed has some files in it)

using "ntfs undelete" program i can undelted all files (if i have 250 gb of free space). however, can testdisk somehow revert/correct the partition? at the moment it shows the same empty ntfs partition as windows.

thanks in advance
antoni

[cgrenier]

In your case, TestDisk can't undo what chkdsk has done but TestDisk has also an undelete feature (It's the Advanced menu). Be careful to store the recovered files on another disk.

[baskak]

thanks. but it reports "no deleted file found"...

[Fiona]

Chkdsk can have a try to repair a file system but it's not intended to recover data.
Chkdsk can modify/alter file system and data.
That's why if you don't have a backup, don't use chkdsk.
Normally chkdsk is not reversible.
An exception would be if chkdsk has modified your partition.
In this case it might be possible.
Are your files all in your recycle bin?

Fiona