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I have an external 1.5TB hard-drive which I've been using for years, no back-ups.

I have several partitions on that hard-drive, one of which has all my data on (I cannot remember whether FAT32/NTFS), and another bootable partition.

I attempted to install UbuntuStudio via Startup Disk Creator, I incorrectly assumed it would only write to the mounted bootable partition. Once I realised my mistake I clicked cancel, Startup Disk Creator crashed and I killed the program.

Now all of my partitions bar the 'UbuntuStudio' created partition have disappeared. The operation only lasted a second, I am hoping my data is recoverable.

I followed: Recover 1TB disk erased with startup disk creator, which showed a list of partitions not able to be recovered, and some which could be. From the partitions of which I could list files, none were my data partition. There were two partitions of identical size (about 200GB) which I could not list the files of. I know the 'label'/name of my data partition, if only I could search for it.

I'm on the verge of despair here, bar committing a crime - I'm sure the Police would have no trouble recovering my data - I don't know what to do. To whoever helps, I owe my sanity to you.

Note: I would post my logs, but I made a further mistake of closing testdisk - the operation took about 12 hours.

GParted screenshot

To my knowledge my HDD is not 5.45 TiB, it is ~1.5 TB.

Any method which repairs the partition records in place is ideal, I do not have a separate external HDD for backing up my files.

Update: this is what I see:

Testdisk output 1

Update:

Testdisk output 2

Scan has finished, I would like to attempt to Add Partition using data from the screenshots, can someone please confirm my actions?

I do not have an external HDD and am attempting repair in-place, with testdisk if possible. Searching for 'testdisk add partition' is returning few relevant results, e. g., https://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-797449.html

I am trying to get specific advice about recovering the partition layout, or recreating it if it's corrupt beyond repair.

Community
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Vix
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1 Answers1

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It is a good idea to clone the drive with ddrescue as soon as possible, and do the recovery work on the cloned copy. Then you dare test more recovery options. It things go wrong, you can clone it again for more tests.

Install ddrescue with the following command,

sudo apt-get install gddrescue

You find instructions including examples in the info page,

info ddrescue

-o-

I think it is a good idea to continue with testdisk, to try different ways of using it.

If you still have no luck, it is possible to use photorec, also from www.cgsecurity.org/. Photorec will probably recover a lot of your files, but without directory structure and file names, so it is a lot of hard work to identify the recovered files and give them suitable names. It is probably easier to work, if you let photorec search for one file type each time, and take care of those files instead of all files at the same time.

-o-

Gparted is not able to interpret the partition structure of the cloned iso file correctly - this is why the drive size seems to be 4 times bigger than it is.

sudodus
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