An IT professional is often only as good as the tools at their disposal. Occasionally I discover a new tool that I know will become an indispensable addition to my overall toolkit and such is the case with my latest find.
Introducing TestDisk.
Hard drives are troublesome devices. They fail, they corrupt, and are categorically grumpy.
Recently a friend of mine brought me a computer that had a corrupted MBR (Master Boot Record) and the entire hard disk was unusable. I used a USB hard drive adapter kit to attach the hard drive to another system only to find that Windows Explorer detected the hard drive as unformatted. Any attempt to access the drive was met with a prompt to format the drive. Years worth of financial data and personal pictures would have been lost by confirming the format procedure. I needed a way to attempt to recover the partition information so I could retrieve the data.
After some searching a forum post led me to TestDisk. TestDisk is a multi-Operating System hard drive recovery utility. It supports DOS, Windows, Linux, and Mac operating systems and works with FAT, ext2/ext3, and NTFS file structures. It is a master of all. It is specifically designed to “recover lost partitions and make non-booting disks bootable again.”
Initially I was skeptical, it isn’t often that a tool works as advertised but it was worth a shot. I downloaded the Windows version (which doesn’t even require install) and pointed it to the USB attached IDE hard drive. I instructed TestDisk to attempt detection of the partition and its initial attempt was fruitless. However, it immediately asked if I wanted to perform a deeper scan. (The initial scan looks at sectors whereas the in depth scan inspects cylinders.) After a few minutes it detected the primary partition. I then followed the prompts to recover the partition and immediately I was able to access the hard drive and backup my friends data.
After making a backup of the data I placed the hard drive back into the original computer and booted to a Windows OS CD. I chose to boot into recovery mode and ran the FIXBOOT and FIXMBR commands. Windows detected a valid backup of the MBR and replace the corrupted MBR. Voila, a bootable hard drive.
TestDisk is a dream of a utility. To begin with it is free and open source (licensed via GPL). TestDisk excels in leading a user through its intuitive command line menu system. You can use this utility without ever needing the documentation. If you do view the documentation you will find detailed step-by-step guides, screenshots, and excellent OS notation. Finally, it simply works. It’s difficult to believe such a program can deliver on such broad promises but it has made a believer out of me.
So the next time you need to be someone’s IT hero fire up TestDisk and bring that troublesome hard drive back under submission.
To the TestDisk Team I want to say a heartfelt Thank you. You took the time to develop and excellent tool and released it to the world. You helped save my friend’s memories and I know that I’ll be calling on your utility again.
TestDisk has been added to my tools page under HardDrive utilities.
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{ 6 comments }
Hey – I'm glad I could help you test a new tool – ha ha ha! Thanks for stopping by and leaving comments – I was a little thrown at first by your user name. Clever! A little birdie tells me you can get a fab deal on a new computer. I would greatly appreciate your help in this area. Let me know what info you need from me! BTW, I passed your blog on to a friend or two.
Yes I am agree that TestDisk has features for both novices and experts. Its a user friendly tool. I have used Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery Software to recover my corrupted files . It is also a user friendly and pocket friendly product.
Yes I am agree that TestDisk has features for both novices and experts. Its a user friendly tool. I have used Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery Software to recover my corrupted files . It is also a user friendly and pocket friendly product.
I face the same problems sometimes too. What I did is to run my computer through a computer check up and it was all fixed. If you are interested you can also do the same through Data Recovery Services offers by stellar.
I'm glad it worked so well for you. It would be helpful if you posted screen shots and walked people through how you did this “Recovery”. I used it on my Mac, and it did not work so well.
I ended up having to use their other tool, PhotoRec, to get all my files back, and then use pdisk (the disk partition utility in Terminal on the Mac) to re-initialize the partition table and then I reinstalled everything from scratch… Such a shame, but at least I got most of my files back. Unfortunately, some of them are broken up into chunks, I wonder if I can just use the copy command to merge them back together. 
I'm glad it worked so well for you. It would be helpful if you posted screen shots and walked people through how you did this “Recovery”. I used it on my Mac, and it did not work so well.
I ended up having to use their other tool, PhotoRec, to get all my files back, and then use pdisk (the disk partition utility in Terminal on the Mac) to re-initialize the partition table and then I reinstalled everything from scratch… Such a shame, but at least I got most of my files back. Unfortunately, some of them are broken up into chunks, I wonder if I can just use the copy command to merge them back together. 
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