help - need vfat recovery

perbh · 2008-10-16 21:42:03

I just did the dreaded thing - was going to copy from one usb vfat to another.
I was going to do a 'mkdosfs -F32' on the target drive and did the source drive instead (I've not accessed it since then!!!).
Any good linux tools out there?? (or my daughter's gonna kill me!!)
Plueeeze help! I'm trying to google but so far has found only windows tools, I _need_ linux.

R00KIE · 2008-10-16 21:47:09

You can try this http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk
Once when GParted (with the help of windows disk manager) completely erased several of my partitions this did the trick for me.

perbh · 2008-10-16 21:58:53

Hmmm - I've looked it up - and seems to be mostly for partition recovery or recover deleted files.
Files haven't been deleted, they are still there - and intact, but as it were I have deleted the 'table of content'.
What I really need is a recovery that will try to pull the data off the drive and trying to resurrect on it another drive - ie. only to do a r/o on the formatte drive.

Thanks for your suggestion, though - I've got my knickers in a twist here ...

R00KIE · 2008-10-16 22:45:29

Then you could try dd to make an image of the drive then mount it in a loop device and go from there.
In my case no files where overwritten too, just a messed up partition table (extended partitions included) and the programs sorted it out.
In your case most probably just adding a new partition of type vfat without creating the file system after that could work too but I would work on the image
To make the image:

sudo dd if=/dev/sdx of=/home/yourusername/thumbd.img

where x is the letter of your "dead" thumbdrive.
To mount it as a loop device:

sudo losetup /dev/loop0 /home/yourusername/thumbd.img

you may need to do this first before you can use the loop device:

sudo modprobe loop

then just use /dev/loop0 as you would use /dev/sdx

Last edited by R00KIE (2008-10-16 22:46:17)

perbh · 2008-10-16 23:26:14

Thank you - and I _am_ going to save the image (just incase).
But ...
the 'old' drive was 80 gigs and contained some 60 gigs of jpg's (for the past 4 years!!)
The new drive is 500 gigs, so yes, I've got plenty of space both for the image and recovery ...
It just all takes time - and a lot of it :-(

<edit>
Mind you, I'm not sure anything will let you put an 80-gig file on it? certainly not vfat!!
</edit>

Last edited by perbh (2008-10-16 23:34:05)

R00KIE · 2008-10-17 08:12:57

Well .... vfat cant, i just mentioned it because you mentioned it first
Most probably you had one big ntfs partition, and if you want to create an image as big as that you need an ntfs, ext2 or ext3 file system (as far as i know, there are others by I've never tried them so better not mention any of them).

perbh · 2008-10-17 13:44:38

I guess I should've been a tad more explicit.
1) old usb-drive, 80 gigs, 1 partition, fat-32: contains 5 years of jpegs (my daughter, she uses win-2000)
2) new usb-drive, 500 gigs, 1 partition: was gonna backup 1) to this so I made it vfat as well, linux is a tad happier using vfat

I connected both drives to my linux laptop 1) came up as /dev/sdb and 2) came up as /dev/sdc.
Formatting 2) should've been easy: mkdosfs -F 32 /dev/sdc1, but instead I did a 'mkdosfs -F 32 /dev/sdb1' - and that's when I realized I was in big trouble!

I guess I can reformat /dev/sdc1 to NTFS and then make the 80-gig image ... I just wasn't sure if a file that big could be done, even using NTFS.

If that goes well, I'll try out your 'testdisk' ...

Thanks again!

Arch Linux

#1 2008-10-16 21:42:03

help - need vfat recovery

#2 2008-10-16 21:47:09

Re: help - need vfat recovery

#3 2008-10-16 21:58:53

Re: help - need vfat recovery

#4 2008-10-16 22:45:29

Re: help - need vfat recovery

#5 2008-10-16 23:26:14

Re: help - need vfat recovery

#6 2008-10-17 08:12:57

Re: help - need vfat recovery

#7 2008-10-17 13:44:38

Re: help - need vfat recovery

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