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#1 2010-11-07 23:31:53

ambalex
Member
Registered: 2004-11-17
Posts: 87

recovery of fat external hd

hi,
I was distracted and instead of running mkfs.vfat on a flash disk I ran it on my external hd. The hd was already in a FAT format.
I realized what I was doing some seconds after the command was typed and canceled it with CTRL+C.
Now, I cannot access the data on my hd.
Is there any hope to recover the data?
thanks

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#2 2010-11-07 23:43:08

karol
Archivist
Registered: 2009-05-06
Posts: 25,440

Re: recovery of fat external hd

You can try testdisk or some similar software but I'm not sure you can un-format a partition.
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk … le_for_FAT

Last edited by karol (2010-11-07 23:44:05)

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#3 2010-11-07 23:46:07

TigTex
Member
From: Portugal
Registered: 2008-06-19
Posts: 301

Re: recovery of fat external hd

Try to download and run "hirens boot cd". It has some good utilities that can help you recover your files. (there are more alternatives...)
If that command was only writing a new FAT table when you canceled it, your files should be intact, if it was zero filling your hdd, some files may be corrupted.

Last edited by TigTex (2010-11-07 23:48:40)


.::. TigTex @ Portugal .::.

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#4 2010-11-08 13:36:37

ambalex
Member
Registered: 2004-11-17
Posts: 87

Re: recovery of fat external hd

thanks for the tips.
karol, testdisk will show the files i've deleted from he hd allright, but not the undeleted ones, which is what i want to recover.

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#5 2010-11-08 13:43:26

perbh
Member
From: Republic of Texas
Registered: 2005-03-04
Posts: 765

Re: recovery of fat external hd

Had a similar problem once - in the end had to resort to some 3rd-party windows tools (think: $$$)
Files at least two levels deep where generally recovered ok, those higher up were usually a hit or a miss - mostly the latter.

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#6 2010-11-13 17:06:22

ambalex
Member
Registered: 2004-11-17
Posts: 87

Re: recovery of fat external hd

hi!
thanks for all the tips.
I managed to rescue many many files with photorec, which comes with testdisk. Samller files were ok, larger files not that much, but the most important files, i think i've got them. Unfortunately, filenames and directory tree structure are gone.
Since testdisk would only show the deleted files on the partially formatted hd, I formatted the hd (with mkdosfs, that is to say, I completed the formatation) in the hope that it would work better after that. But it does not, all I get is No files found, filesystem seems damaged, even when I mark the partition as deleted, as stated in the testdisk wiki (http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Step_By_Step). However, even upon the format completion, photorec still recovers the same files.
It would really be awsome to get back the directory tree structure, since it would spare me a big deal of work. Is it possible?
Many thanks again.

Last edited by ambalex (2010-11-13 17:15:04)

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#7 2010-12-06 15:52:29

ambalex
Member
Registered: 2004-11-17
Posts: 87

Re: recovery of fat external hd

well, it was possible, but with a 3rd party windows tool.

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