cgsecurity.org

Posted: **29 Mar 2020, 18:18**

Hello folks ...

I have a unique partition recovery challenge for which I am trying to use TestDisk to solve. I did a lot of research related to using TestDisk and read a lot of the material on this site and on other sites related to using TestDisk but I will appreciate all your expert insights also ...

Ext HDD Type
The External HDD is an "LG External HDD HXD7 USB 3.0 500 GB"

Original Issue
1. The Ext HDD already had two partitions - one for Windows files and one for MacOS files. I couldn't access the Windows partition from MacOS so I tried to install Windows on the Mac through Boot Camp.
2. While setting up Boot Camp, I accidentally choose the Ext HDD (instead of my Mac HDD) and deleted the partition table on the Ext HDD. This is similar to this user's issue: https://perrohunter.com/repair-a-mac-os ... ion-table/

Recreating the Partition Table with TestDisk
1. As I had two partitions on the Ext HDD (Windows and MacOS), I was not sure which partition type to select. TestDisk automatically detected an Intel partition table so I let it go with that.
2. After the Quick Search, it only found a single FAT32 LBA partition so I did a deeper scan that lasted about 12 hours.
3. TestDisk found a bunch of partitions which it said cannot be recovered. This is similar to this user's experience: viewtopic.php?t=7786
4. I will like to recover the two partitions (and my files) using TestDisk or MacOS's pdisk. Worst case, I can try to recover the files (I just don't have enough space on my computer to do that)
5. Can you review the log file and give some guidance on what a good next step is?

TestDisk Log File so far ...
The log file is causing this post to go over 60,000 character limit so I have uploaded it here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1RimKj ... 52bPkVDIpo

Posted: **29 Mar 2020, 19:53**

Which of the 3 partitions is the Windows partition you want to recover ?

Code: Select all

     FAT32 LBA                      2  976773167  976773166 [WININSTALL]
     FAT32, blocksize=32768, 500 GB / 465 GiB
     HPFS - NTFS                 2048  976769023  976766976 [LG External HDD]
     NTFS found using backup sector, blocksize=4096, 500 GB / 465 GiB
     HPFS - NTFS               411648  488798207  488386560 [WINDOWS]
     NTFS found using backup sector, blocksize=4096, 250 GB / 232 GiB

Posted: **29 Mar 2020, 20:14**

This one is the Window's partition which I'm interested in:

Code: Select all

     HPFS - NTFS               411648  488798207  488386560 [WINDOWS]
     NTFS found using backup sector, blocksize=4096, 250 GB / 232 GiB

I believe this label "WININSTALL" was created by Boot Camp when it overwrote the partition table:

Code: Select all

     FAT32 LBA                      2  976773167  976773166 [WININSTALL]
     FAT32, blocksize=32768, 500 GB / 465 GiB

A newbie question: Should I repeat the Deeper Search using "EFI GPT" to identify the MacOS partition? Or is there a way to figure it out based on the partition results so far?

Ideally, I would like to recover both partitions.

Posted: **18 Apr 2020, 21:43**

I'm still stuck on this. Any further advice?

cgsecurity.org

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