TestDisk - CGSecurity

TestDisk, Data Recovery

TestDisk is OpenSource software and is licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL).

TestDisk is a powerful free data recovery software! It was primarily designed to help recover lost partitions and/or make non-booting disks bootable again when these symptoms are caused by faulty software, certain types of viruses or human error (such as accidentally deleting a Partition Table). Partition table recovery using TestDisk is really easy.

TestDisk can

• Fix partition table, recover deleted partition
• Recover FAT32 boot sector from its backup
• Rebuild FAT12/FAT16/FAT32 boot sector
• Fix FAT tables
• Rebuild NTFS boot sector
• Recover NTFS boot sector from its backup
• Fix MFT using MFT mirror
• Locate ext2/ext3 Backup SuperBlock
• Undelete files from FAT, NTFS and ext2 filesystem
• Copy files from deleted FAT, NTFS and ext2/ext3 partitions.

TestDisk has features for both novices and experts. For those who know little or nothing about data recovery techniques, TestDisk can be used to collect detailed information about a non-booting drive which can then be sent to a tech for further analysis. Those more familiar with such procedures should find TestDisk a handy tool in performing onsite recovery.

Operating systems

TestDisk can run under

• DOS (either real or in a Windows 9x DOS-box),
• Windows (NT4, 2000, XP, 2003, Vista, 2008, Windows 7),
• Linux,
• FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD,
• SunOS and
• MacOS X

Source files and precompiled binary executables are available for DOS, Win32, MacOSX and Linux from the download page

Filesystems

TestDisk can find lost partitions for all of these file systems:

• BeFS ( BeOS )
• BSD disklabel ( FreeBSD/OpenBSD/NetBSD )
• CramFS, Compressed File System
• DOS/Windows FAT12, FAT16 and FAT32
• Windows exFAT
• HFS, HFS+ and HFSX, Hierarchical File System
• JFS, IBM's Journaled File System
• Linux ext2 and ext3
• Linux LUKS encrypted partition
• Linux RAID md 0.9/1.0/1.1/1.2
  • RAID 1: mirroring
  • RAID 4: striped array with parity device
  • RAID 5: striped array with distributed parity information
  • RAID 6: striped array with distributed dual redundancy information
• Linux Swap (versions 1 and 2)
• LVM and LVM2, Linux Logical Volume Manager
• Mac partition map
• Novell Storage Services NSS
• NTFS ( Windows NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista/2008/7 )
• ReiserFS 3.5, 3.6 and 4
• Sun Solaris i386 disklabel
• Unix File System UFS and UFS2 (Sun/BSD/...)
• XFS, SGI's Journaled File System

Documentation

Read more...
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

This little Command Line App has saved my Bacon Many Times! Say, When I messed up my Linux or Windows file system somehow and my Computer wouldn't boot or the drive wasn't even recognized by the Operating System!:O I have almost always used Testdisk from a Live Linux System Restoration CD or a Live Fedora or Dabian CD - DVD, by installing it into the Running Live System. But you can install it on your Running system on your Hard Drive too, if you need to fix a second Drive. You can't use it on the System Drive you are running your OS on, not safely anyway. It is pretty much self explanatory, just follow the instructions. Be very careful though! You could end up worse off than you started out, if you don't pay attention. But, the cool thing is... that most of the time you can just go back in and change what you did wrong and get it right the next time;) I know I have, plenty of times!:)

Don