Arch Linux

nankura

Member

Registered: 2011-08-02

Posts: 166

Disk Clone Broke Windows 7

Hey guys

Ok this was my own idiocy frankly from not doing enough research and rushing things

But i wanted to make an image of my linux installation on /dev/sdc into an img file backed up on /dev/sdb2 ( windows 7 )

i looked up archlinux Disc cloning and followed the instructions without noticing that the method i chose to do actually destroys the windows partition

dd if=/dev/sdc conv=sync,noerror bs=64k | gzip -c > /dev/sdb2 - after doing this i thought it was making a gzip file and thats it. until i went on irc and discovered it was actually deleting my windows installation and something else

i stopped it immediatly but now im stuck

i dont have a windows recovery disk

ive read up on testdisk. and recovering files. but im lost with testdisk, ive never been in a situation like this before , now my windows install wont boot

When i ran an analyse with testdisk. it showed my System reserved NTFS partition and everything else as linux and appearently 1133GB of data

So i have no idea were to go from here or if my data is recoverable

Last edited by nankura (2011-08-15 14:30:50)

steabert

Member

Registered: 2011-04-18

Posts: 78

Re: Disk Clone Broke Windows 7

Can you still mount the /dev/sdb2 partition?  If you can, you can copy your data from the NTFS partition and then reinstall windows and put the data back after that.

Last edited by steabert (2011-08-15 11:21:38)

nankura

Member

Registered: 2011-08-02

Posts: 166

Re: Disk Clone Broke Windows 7

i cant mount it at all. it says there is no partition were the partition was. its just 465GB of space now according to gparted, at the moment photorec from testdisk is retrieving alot of files. but it sucks because the files have random names and folders. its gonna be impossable to find all my important files

Inxsible

Forum Fellow

From: Chicago

Registered: 2008-06-09

Posts: 9,183

Re: Disk Clone Broke Windows 7

please use titles related to and briefly explaining the problem instead of generic ones like "mistake" or "help". Easier to search that way.

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Forum Rules

There's no such thing as a stupid question, but there sure are a lot of inquisitive idiots !

nankura

Member

Registered: 2011-08-02

Posts: 166

Re: Disk Clone Broke Windows 7

my apologys. but i could really use some help with this

heres the output of the analyse of testdisk

TestDisk 6.12, Data Recovery Utility, May 2011                                                                       
Christophe GRENIER <grenier@cgsecurity.org>                                                                           
http://www.cgsecurity.org                                                                                             
                                                                                                                     
Disk /dev/sdb - 500 GB / 465 GiB - CHS 60802 255 63                                                                   
                                                                                                                     
The harddisk (500 GB / 465 GiB) seems too small! (< 1196 GB / 1114 GiB)                                               
Check the harddisk size: HD jumpers settings, BIOS detection...                                                       
                                                                                                                     
The following partitions can't be recovered:                                                                         
     Partition               Start        End    Size in sectors                                                     
>  Linux                35555 133 35 85626 235 49  804397056                                                         
   Linux                35557  13 41 85628 115 55  804397056                                                         
   Linux                35557 241 13 85629  88 27  804397056                                                         
   Linux                35560 191 24 85632  38 38  804397056                                                         
   Linux                35562 201 32 85634  48 46  804397056                                                         
   FAT12                50131 228 44 145516 100  1 1532351919                                                         
                                                                                                                     
                                                                                                                     
[ Continue ]                                                                                                         
EXT4 Large file Sparse superblock Recover, 411 GB / 383 GiB

all the linux sections show the same ext4 msg

but the fat12 shows this

[ Continue ]                                                                                                         
784 GB / 730 GiB

GParted shows the hard disk as an unknown filesystem with a warning label, if there was a way i could change the filesystem back to ntfs without formatting the drive, and fix the MBR, i guess that might fix it, but i have no idea how

Last edited by nankura (2011-08-15 16:23:01)

Stebalien

Member

Registered: 2010-04-27

Posts: 1,238

Website

Re: Disk Clone Broke Windows 7

If testdisk can't fix the partition, try using foremost/photorec to recover your files.

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Steven [ web : git ]
GPG:  327B 20CE 21EA 68CF A7748675 7C92 3221 5899 410C

nankura

Member

Registered: 2011-08-02

Posts: 166

Re: Disk Clone Broke Windows 7

i just reinstalled windows after recovering all my data using photorec. it recovered over 200GB which was pretty much the amount i used

the only annoying bit will be sorting the files because of there names and the 2000+ folders it generated and theres game installers ".exe" programs that look like they were split into parts

but hey, i guess thats the price i pay for not reading before acting

Last edited by nankura (2011-08-15 17:25:11)

steabert

Member

Registered: 2011-04-18

Posts: 78

Re: Disk Clone Broke Windows 7

I don't think it's the "not reading before acting" that is bad, but rather the fact that you didn't have a backup of your data.

darkbeanies

Member

Registered: 2009-01-14

Posts: 142

Re: Disk Clone Broke Windows 7

Aaah never mind...

Last edited by darkbeanies (2011-08-15 17:46:26)