Data Recovery with Testdisk, fixing dumb

Moderator: Forum moderators

Post Reply
User avatar
wizard
Posts: 1984
Joined: Sun Aug 09, 2020 7:50 pm
Has thanked: 2648 times
Been thanked: 692 times

Data Recovery with Testdisk, fixing dumb

Post by wizard »

Data Recovery, fixing dumb

Recently while doing some Puppy install testing I hooked up a hard drive, grabbed my Ventoy USB and booted into a Pup. Started Gparted and deftly deleted the existing partitions and clicked Apply.

Only then did my brain reengage and realize the computer had not recognized the hard drive and I had just deleted everything on the Ventoy USB. DOOH!

Looked over into the mirror and thought "Today, this is what dumb looks like" :oops: :oops:

Did have a backup of the USB, but it was old. It was time for me to renew my acquaintance with Testdisk. Testdisk has been mentioned on the forum before, but worth plugging again here in the Repair section. It is a free cross-platform partition and file recovery program. It can be installed from the PPM or using other package managers. It does not have a menu entry.

Once installed:
-open a terminal
-type: testdisk
-press: enter

Testdisk will open and it is a menu driven application, so there's no need to enter complex command line strings. There are many howto's on the web and it's not hard to use.

A few minutes later I had recovered all of my customized files and drive structure. I did have to reinstall Ventoy and copy over my ISO's, but the hard part had been saved. :mrgreen:

Should you find yourself in need of a data recovery program give this one a try. :thumbup2:

wizard

Big pile of OLD computers

darksun
Posts: 123
Joined: Tue Dec 19, 2023 10:12 am
Location: sitting in front of my terminal
Has thanked: 52 times
Been thanked: 37 times

Re: Data Recovery, fixing dumb

Post by darksun »

wizard wrote: Tue Sep 03, 2024 1:49 pm

It can be installed from the PPM or using other package managers.

or you can get the latest version, .tar.bz2 archive file, from the official website and keep it in your toolkit directory, the binary does not need to be installed, it is portable.

Code: Select all

./testdisk_static

Code: Select all

./photorec_static

great pieces of software the two of them.

Post Reply

Return to “Repair”