[NBLUG/talk] Partition Recovery tools

Andrew argonaut at softhome.net
Tue Dec 7 22:18:14 PST 2004


Troy Arnold wrote on Tue, 7 Dec 2004 20:10:35 -0800:

> On Tue, Dec 07, 2004 at 08:05:51PM -0800, Harry Heim wrote:
> > Hi,
> > Does anyone know of a good/free GNU  HD/partition table
> > recovery tool?  I found  "TestDisk",
> > http://www.cgsecurity.org/.  I have a Knoppix CD(3.3) and it
> > has TestDisk on it but I think its a bit old(v4.2)?
[snip]
> 
> Oooh, maybe if I type fast I'll beat Kyle to the answer.  
> The tool you want is 'gpart' for "Guess Partition"  It's
> included with Knoppix.

I'd like to add that both TestDisk and gpart
( http://www.stud.uni-hannover.de/user/76201/gpart/ )
have statically-linked binaries for download. These are
self-contained programs which don't rely on any shared objects.
This means you can download and run the latest version under
*any* Linux (or FreeBSD, in the case of gpart) environment,
whether it be Tom's rtbt, Linux-BBC, Knoppix, or your distro's
rescue CD. Just be sure that, if you run them under an
environment which already has (possibly older) versions of the
tools, you run the correct binary. It's best to use the full
pathname to the one you just downloaded.

Both tools have a "look, but don't touch" mode. Run each tool
this way and scrutinize the results. Go with whichever one seems
to give the best results. If neither one looks good, you haven't
written anything to the MBR and so are free to seek out other
means of reconstructing the partition table.

Good luck!

A.




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