Running TestDisk

From CGSecurity

TestDisk Startup

When TestDisk is executed, you may see the phrase Please wait... on your screen until it has gathered enough data from the BIOS or OS to list the disk drives on the system. 

TestDisk 6.2-WIP, Data Recovery Utility, November 2005
Christophe GRENIER <grenier@cgsecurity.org>
http://www.cgsecurity.org

  TestDisk is free software, and
comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.

Select a media (use Arrow keys, then press ENTER):
Disk /dev/hdc - 708 MB / 675 MiB
Disk /dev/sda - 120 GB / 111 GiB
Disk /dev/sdb - 120 GB / 111 GiB







[Proceed ]  [  Quit  ]

Note: Disk capacity must be correctly detected for a successful recovery.
If a disk listed above has incorrect size, check HD jumper settings, BIOS
detection, and install the latest OS patches and disk drivers.

If the reported size doesn't match the harddisk size, i.e., a 120 GB harddisk is recognized as only a 32 GB harddisk, check your BIOS harddisk settings and the jumpers on the disk. On most large hard disks, there are jumpers to limit the size to only 32 or 8 GB. If your HD is detected as 130 GB only, LBA48 support may not be avaible in your OS, read OS notes for more information.

Next step is to select the partition table type 

TestDisk 6.2-WIP, Data Recovery Utility, November 2005
Christophe GRENIER <grenier@cgsecurity.org>
http://www.cgsecurity.org


Disk /dev/sda - 120 GB / 111 GiB

Please select the partition table type, press ENTER when done.
[ Intel ]  Intel/PC partition
[ Mac   ]  Apple partition map
[ None  ]  Non partioned media
[ Sun   ]  Sun Solaris partition
[ XBox  ]  XBox partition







Note: Do NOT select 'None' for media with only a single partition. It's very
rare for a drive to be 'Non-partitioned'.

TestDisk Menu Items

If you don't understand how to use TestDisk

  • run testdisk_win or testdisk /log /debug (make sure to hit the space bar once before each forward slash),
  • select the faulty hard disk using arrow keys then press the ENTER key,
  • after TestDisk is finished (Note: you may need to press the ENTER key a couple more times during its processing), choose Search! to restart the analysis.
  • just send the file which TestDisk creates, testdisk.log, to grenier@cgsecurity.org and a brief explanation about the problem and your previous partitions (size, label, filesystem type).

Note: TestDisk appends new information to testdisk.log; it does not overwrite an existing file.


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Data Recovery