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iEatTendies

Member

Registered: 2021-06-18

Posts: 8

[SOLVED] testdisk and photorec results than windows software

I formatted my 1TB Microsoft basic data partition NTFS HDD with 20 years of docs, photos and other valuable data after following the mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/sda1 and mkswap /dev/sda2 commands of installing arch, these commands were supposed to be performed on the /dev/nvmen0p1 and /dev/nvmen0p2 partitions respectively so I took my HDD to data recovery services and they used three windows-based pieces of software to recover all files, but 10 of photos all of which were located inside of many folders all of which were inside one particular folder of the seven folders that were located in the base directory of the disk, and only the third one of their software was able to recover the files, but they are not likely to agree to use any linux-based data recovery software such as testdisk and photorec as they were only using windows software for the last 10 years of their services. I took the hard drive to another place and they seem to not really have any linux expertise either. But I don't even know if testdisk and photorec could produce better results than all windows software, it probably is different in various cases and situations. I wonder if there is hope that linux software could produce better results and if I have to seek specialists that have expertise in gnu/linux and gnu/linux-related software.

Last edited by iEatTendies (2021-08-06 08:43:04)

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 77,432

Re: [SOLVED] testdisk and photorec results than windows software

Let's transfer that wall of glyphs into readable text for dissection.

I formatted my 1TB Microsoft basic data partition NTFS HDD with 20 years of docs, photos and other valuable data after following the mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/sda1 and mkswap /dev/sda2 commands of installing arch. These commands were supposed to be performed on the /dev/nvmen0p1 and /dev/nvmen0p2 partitions respectively…
So I took my HDD to data recovery services and they used three windows-based pieces of software to recover all files.

But 10 of photos all of which were located inside of many folders all of which were inside one particular folder of the seven folders that were located in the base directory of the disk, and only the third one of their software was able to recover the files.

But they are not likely to agree to use any linux-based data recovery software such as testdisk and photorec as they were only using windows software for the last 10 years of their services.

If you tasked a service to recover data for you… why do you think you need to make them specific software for that task?
You give them money, they give you your data…

I took the hard drive to another place and they seem to not really have any linux expertise either.

Ok, so the other company and their success didn't matter?

But I don't even know if testdisk and photorec could produce better results than all windows software, it probably is different in various cases and situations. I wonder if there is hope that linux software could produce better results and if I have to seek specialists that have expertise in gnu/linux and gnu/linux-related software.

Like: What??

You shredded the filesystem of at least one partition.
To the degree where the data is not defragmented and you didn't write other stuff onto the disk (eg. installing some software…) or activated the swap (the NTFS on that partition is probably intact, you just lost the first block and testdisk might be able to recover the filesystem) you can probably recover the data.

THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH LINUX OR ANY OTHER OS.

You're looking to recover the data from a partition that lost its filesystem.

How you lost the filesystem DOES NOT MATTER.
How you recover the data DOES NOT MATTER.

If you want to approach the task yourself, the most important thing is to never mount the partitions writable or activate the swap.

If you want some service to recover the data for you, why would you care how they approach that???
Let them do their thing and be happy for the returned data. Who cares whether they used tesdisk or some windows software or black magic?

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Wild Penguin

Member

Registered: 2015-03-19

Posts: 406

Re: [SOLVED] testdisk and photorec results than windows software

Generally the answer is: take backups. If you've overwritten the data, there is only so much any software can do.

My guess is that these windows-based software only scan the HDDs raw data for the file signatures without caring anything about the underlying file system which was there. This works in many cases. I'm not sure which sofware exists (if any) to do the same on Linux. Note: the OS used for data recovery is really irrelevant. What matters is the tools used, and perhaps sometimes the skill of the one doing the recovery job.

To get better results, you could try gpart's rescue command, and see if it can still detect the filesystem you had on /dev/sda1 and /dev/sda2 (a bit of information you didn't tell us) before you overwrote it with mkfs.fat. That way you may be able to recover a bit more files, but I would be surprised you can do any better job than the ones at the data recovery service you used.