TestDisk, recovery partitions tool

Very good and easy to use tool to recover lost partitions.

A friend of mine, brought its computer with a hard drive that worked fine, but there was no partition's information. After many hours testing the disk and trying to recover the partitions information of the MBR sector.
I found a very good tool, amazingly easy to use and runnable in many ways and in many systems. Also, the official web page has a proper and detailed documentation.


The tool is called TestDisk and I used the version 6.11.3. Download here.

At the end, I could solved the problem in few steps. First, I took the hdd off from the computer and installed it in a external enclosure. Then, I connected the hdd enclosure to my computer, running Ubuntu 9.04 (amazing OS, now I have 10.4) and I run the TestDisk program.

Previously I downloaded the "testdisk-6.11.3.linux26.tar.bz2" file and extracted it into my home folder.

Then, I opened a console terminal and accessed to the "testdisk-6.11.3" folder. Then I went to the "linux" folder and just run the program by using the command "./testdisk_static".

Once the program is running, it asks you to create a log file, just press enter and it says "You need to be root to use TestDisk." :-). So just run it again by using the command "sudo ./testdisk_static".

Then just create the log file and it automatically detects all the disks, include the external hdd connected by usb.

Once the program had detected the hdds, I just selected the one I wanted to fix. (You can know that by checking the size and Label). Then just proceed, the program asks you about the partition types. I selected "Intel" (I wasn't sure, but It worked), then the program just found the lost partitions, and asked me if write the new MBR sector with the proper information about the partitions.

Finally, I installed back the hdd into the laptop and turn it on. The disk was working fine again and I only needed to adjust the boot sector.

To fix to boot sector in this case, I used a "Windows Vista Recovery CD". Is it possible to get if from Torrent or by creating it from any other computer with windows Vista. It is not a recovery Operating System, it is just a recovery CD with some tools to fix the OS.

Here, there is a tutorial about how to use the Win. Vista recovery CD. There are many more.


Posted by Marc Andreu.