Testdisk query

[HughR]

One of our teachers brought in an unusable portable 120GB HD (2.5"). It was not backed up and there is about 2 years worth of work stored on it. I have analysed the drive with several utilities and until I tried Testdisk was getting nothing usful from it.

 

Testdisk did a deep scan and found that the FAT had been deleted/corrupted somehow, but a backup had been found in a restore folder.

 

All the scans I've done so far are non-invasive as I don't want to risk overwriting anything; can anyone tell me if by restoring the FAT are we likely to lose any data - if so how much - I'm guessing not a lot.

 

I have tried cloning (using Clonezilla) it to an equal sized partition on another drive so I can do a dry-run, but without the FAT, nothing (apart from Testdisk) has been able to read it to clone it.

[plexer]

You could try downloading the helix forensics boot cd and using it's utilities to clone it, I presume a DD copy of the disk should succeed as that woudn't care about the fat.

 

Ben