My goal is to find one that will recover data from a fat32 partition that was accidentally formatted on an external hard drive.
Windows
-------------
GetDataBack - http://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-software.htm runs on disks with FAT32 and NTFS. I have used this successfully.
Active@ Partition Recovery - www.partition-recovery.com
EASEUS Data Recovery Wizard Professional 5.6.5 -
AidFile Recovery (Supposed to suppoert Fat32, ExFat, NTFS) http://www.exfatrecovery.com/
AidFile Recovery (Supposed to suppoert Fat32, ExFat, NTFS) http://www.exfatrecovery.com/
Hetman Partition Recovery v1.0 - may hang
Remo Recover Windows 3 0 0 119- (couldn't get my hands on the mac version)
----------------------------
Windows Mentionables
----------------------------
Easeus Partition Recovery - CNET Download.com -Lame because the free version may only recover 1gb of data
Active Undelete?
Recuva-Free undelete program, but I'm not sure if it will restore an overwritten partition
-------
Linux
-------
TestDisk- Free Linux based recovery tool- http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk
---
Mac
--------
Leawo.Software.Co.Ltd.Data.Recovery.Pro.v3.1.0.MACOSX -Fail! It recognized the 100MB partition on my flash drive (that I can't delete) but failed to find my hard drive or my actual USB drive.
-----------
Background
Have an External hard drive that has a GUID Partition Table (for newer Macs). Master Boot Record is greyed out in Disk Utility.
Windows XP does not
Windows Vista+ recognized ExFAT (which is an improved file format comparable to NTFS but that is *supposed to be read by Mac 10.6+can be read).
I don't know of an ExFAT recovery program.
I don't know of a program that could recover an HFS+ Mac hard drive that had been overwritten with NTFS or some other program. Maybe these could.
XP failed to read any space on the 2.72 ExFAT formatted drive (Which Windows 7 and Mac recognized. (0 MB) in My computer, but XP's Computer Management recognized 2794.32 GB as
What I've done.
-XP offers to format the drive as ExFAT or NTFS by right clicking in My Computer but fails formatting to ExFAT. Does format the drive to NTFS. Fails at formatting the now NTFS 3TB drive to
-Computer Management at one point offered Fat32 or NTFS, but it is only offering to format the now unallocated 3TB to NTFS.
-Made a 200GB partition and formatted it as NTFS
-Windows failed at formatting the 200GB NTFS to ExFAT in My Computer again in XP
-Connected hard drive another MacBook Pro running a Windows 7 and used it to format it to ExFAT again. Mac did not detect ExFat drive. Connected drive back to Windows 7. It was recognized. Connected drive back to Mac. 10.8. It was not recognized.
-Used Mac Disk Utility to convert the drive to a 200GB ExFAT
-Got stuck and found the web page below
"Unfortunately, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 will only format a removable drive in FAT32 if it’s less than 32GB! Hmmm…that pretty much cuts out ALL modern external hard drives!
However, Windows can format a drive that is larger than 32GB in FAT32, but you have to use the DOS command prompt. However, if you have a drive that is 1TB or larger, you may still get an error saying “The volume is too big for FAT32”.
In that case, you can use a free program called SwissKnife that will allow you to format an external hard drive that is up to 2TB in size. Let’s go through both methods. In case you are having problems getting your external hard drive to show up in Windows, read my article on how to change the drive letter for an external drive in Windows.
http://www.online-tech-tips.com/computer-tips/formatting-external-hard-drive-to-fat-32/ "
--Before I do that, I use Disk Utility to create a 200GB partition of MS-DOS (FAT) at the end of the hard drive, and another partition of 190GB ExFAT inside of it. I want to see if either of these can be recognized by Windows 7 and Windows XP. The rest of the drive is free space. Still is GUID Partition table. OSX 10.8 recognizes both partitions it just created.
-Pluged into another MacBook Pro with a virtual machine of Windows 7. It auto opened in Windows 7 without me asking where to connect the new drive (Mac or Windows 7). Windows 7 recognizes both the FAT32 and ExFAT partitions.
-I am starting to wonder if something is wrong on the XP virtual machine I have been using. I open an XP Virtual machine on another computer. It takes about 2 minutes after getting the USB drive connected for XP to recognize the FAT32 and ExFAT partitions. Success!! Maybe I just didn't wait long enough for it to be recognized earlier. --Confirmation that a GUID based FAT32 drive created in Disk Utility is readable on Windows XP (at least one of my two) and Windows 7. The ExFAT partition shows up as "Not Formatted" in Windows XP but is readable on Windows 7. Maybe there was an update this XP version didn't install yet that gives it ExFAT support. I will stick with FAT32 for now.
Now I need to test that I can recover photo data from a FAT32 external hard drive and place the backup files on one of these FAT32 or ExFAT partitions.
Prep.
I will format a USB drive (Master Boot Record, not GUID) with FAT32. Copy pictures to it. Then I will format the drive in disk utility by creating 2 new partitions on top of that (and maybe writing something to the second partition to be more real world... but it may just take the recovery longer... but it is just an 8GB drive. May as well get as close to the real things as possible.)
I am formatting an 8GB SanDisk Cruzer Micro (which has a 100MB partition Disk Utility doesn't recognize) as FAT32 in Disk Utility. I am naming this "original" partition ORIGINALDR. I am creating three picture folders on it TestPicFolder1, 2, and 3. TestPicFolder1 has 5 pictures of some artwork I did. TestPicFolder2 has 5 pics of me. TestPicFolder3 has 5 pictures of mountains.
Now I am using Disk Utility to try to shrink the FAT32 volume... and it does not let me like it does with HFS+ (Mac's hard drive format). I click on partition Layout, and change it to 2 partitions. The first will be Fat32, named Part1FAT32 and 3.81GB, and second partition HFS+ (Mac OS Extended (Journaled)) titled Part2HFS and is 4.23GB. (I do that to be able to tell them apart in more than one way if the titles are stripped in the recovery program and just sizes show up of potentially recoverable drives.) Clicked "Apply". Ejecting from this computer with the potentially bad Windows Virtual Machine that may not read the large external drive which will be where we will transfer recovered pictures to.
I will try running the recovery program in Windows 7 x64, though it was probably made for XP x32 because I am curious if it will work. I also don't want to be stuck using XP forever.
Installing Runtime GetbackData for FAT on Windows 7 x64. I select the option for Systematic File Damage (because that is what you are apparently supposed to click if you format a drive you need to recover). It says not data could be written over it. I do not believe data was written over the section I need. My guess is if I did the next most extensive option (sustained file damage), that it would take even longer to run.
I can select the whole flash drive, or just one of the partitions. Since this is experimentation time and I want to save time on the larger actual 500GB drive (and not have it scan an extra 250GB), and I know the data would be underneath only the first partition, I will select the first partition fat32 and see if it can recover the picture folders and images hidden underneath that part of the drive. 5 minute estimate.
I am given two FAT32 partitions to choose from,
one at sector 30,616 (3.53GB) with no data listed on the right of the screen next to FAT1, FAT2, FAT root, or 1st Root Cluster.
the other below it is at sector 14,524 (3.54GB) and does have FAT1 34 (Quality=9%)... which scares me Fat2 (Quality 9%) Total clusters 928,260.
I clicked NEXT for the partition with data.
I got ..fsevesntsd which had 3 junk files in it.
Spotlight V100 with two folders in it.
[0007E5] with some junk data and two junk folders
Glad we tried that. Now I will try the partition with seemingly no data. It finished running in 5 seconds.
I see the folders listed above and TestPicFolder1 through 3. All of them have 5 pictures. I can double click and open each one. Success!
Turns out the folder is automatically created on your destination drive/folder when you select the files in a folder, and click "Copy" It asks for where I want to store them. The application will not let me copy the pictures to the \\vmware-host\Shared Folders\Desktop. It will let me copy the folders to the C drive. My virtual machines are only 40GB, so I have to use an external media for the 160ish GB of images I need to recover. I Went o Options-Environment and changed the default save directory to the FDrive (My ExFat drive... saving my FAT32 for the real thing). I just click on the folder (with the included file names shown on the right) and click copy. Then the folder gets saved to the drive I had specified. Perfect.
The file size is identical betweern the copy and the original.
I am now going back to step 1 and recovring the full 8GB drive. 10 minute estimate for 8GB.
I get FAT32 at 30,616 (7.47GB)- same sector as the other one.. Same test pics
Fat32 sector 14,263,036 (699MB)-and I found some older pictures that had been overwritten a year ago.
FAT32 sector 14,524 (3.54 GB) (same as the other)
FAT32 sector 11,467,883 (2.02 GB)
Finally doing the real thing!
Going to just to the first partition since the original files were about 150GB, estimated time is almost 7 hours for 288GB, but the countdown timer was going faster until 6:30 was left (first 2 minutes of running)
Background
Have an External hard drive that has a GUID Partition Table (for newer Macs). Master Boot Record is greyed out in Disk Utility.
Windows XP does not
Windows Vista+ recognized ExFAT (which is an improved file format comparable to NTFS but that is *supposed to be read by Mac 10.6+can be read).
I don't know of an ExFAT recovery program.
I don't know of a program that could recover an HFS+ Mac hard drive that had been overwritten with NTFS or some other program. Maybe these could.
XP failed to read any space on the 2.72 ExFAT formatted drive (Which Windows 7 and Mac recognized. (0 MB) in My computer, but XP's Computer Management recognized 2794.32 GB as
What I've done.
-XP offers to format the drive as ExFAT or NTFS by right clicking in My Computer but fails formatting to ExFAT. Does format the drive to NTFS. Fails at formatting the now NTFS 3TB drive to
-Computer Management at one point offered Fat32 or NTFS, but it is only offering to format the now unallocated 3TB to NTFS.
-Made a 200GB partition and formatted it as NTFS
-Windows failed at formatting the 200GB NTFS to ExFAT in My Computer again in XP
-Connected hard drive another MacBook Pro running a Windows 7 and used it to format it to ExFAT again. Mac did not detect ExFat drive. Connected drive back to Windows 7. It was recognized. Connected drive back to Mac. 10.8. It was not recognized.
-Used Mac Disk Utility to convert the drive to a 200GB ExFAT
-Got stuck and found the web page below
"Unfortunately, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 will only format a removable drive in FAT32 if it’s less than 32GB! Hmmm…that pretty much cuts out ALL modern external hard drives!
However, Windows can format a drive that is larger than 32GB in FAT32, but you have to use the DOS command prompt. However, if you have a drive that is 1TB or larger, you may still get an error saying “The volume is too big for FAT32”.
In that case, you can use a free program called SwissKnife that will allow you to format an external hard drive that is up to 2TB in size. Let’s go through both methods. In case you are having problems getting your external hard drive to show up in Windows, read my article on how to change the drive letter for an external drive in Windows.
Format external drive in FAT32 using DOS
walkthrough... "
http://www.online-tech-tips.com/computer-tips/formatting-external-hard-drive-to-fat-32/ "
--Before I do that, I use Disk Utility to create a 200GB partition of MS-DOS (FAT) at the end of the hard drive, and another partition of 190GB ExFAT inside of it. I want to see if either of these can be recognized by Windows 7 and Windows XP. The rest of the drive is free space. Still is GUID Partition table. OSX 10.8 recognizes both partitions it just created.
-Pluged into another MacBook Pro with a virtual machine of Windows 7. It auto opened in Windows 7 without me asking where to connect the new drive (Mac or Windows 7). Windows 7 recognizes both the FAT32 and ExFAT partitions.
-I am starting to wonder if something is wrong on the XP virtual machine I have been using. I open an XP Virtual machine on another computer. It takes about 2 minutes after getting the USB drive connected for XP to recognize the FAT32 and ExFAT partitions. Success!! Maybe I just didn't wait long enough for it to be recognized earlier. --Confirmation that a GUID based FAT32 drive created in Disk Utility is readable on Windows XP (at least one of my two) and Windows 7. The ExFAT partition shows up as "Not Formatted" in Windows XP but is readable on Windows 7. Maybe there was an update this XP version didn't install yet that gives it ExFAT support. I will stick with FAT32 for now.
Now I need to test that I can recover photo data from a FAT32 external hard drive and place the backup files on one of these FAT32 or ExFAT partitions.
Prep.
I will format a USB drive (Master Boot Record, not GUID) with FAT32. Copy pictures to it. Then I will format the drive in disk utility by creating 2 new partitions on top of that (and maybe writing something to the second partition to be more real world... but it may just take the recovery longer... but it is just an 8GB drive. May as well get as close to the real things as possible.)
I am formatting an 8GB SanDisk Cruzer Micro (which has a 100MB partition Disk Utility doesn't recognize) as FAT32 in Disk Utility. I am naming this "original" partition ORIGINALDR. I am creating three picture folders on it TestPicFolder1, 2, and 3. TestPicFolder1 has 5 pictures of some artwork I did. TestPicFolder2 has 5 pics of me. TestPicFolder3 has 5 pictures of mountains.
Now I am using Disk Utility to try to shrink the FAT32 volume... and it does not let me like it does with HFS+ (Mac's hard drive format). I click on partition Layout, and change it to 2 partitions. The first will be Fat32, named Part1FAT32 and 3.81GB, and second partition HFS+ (Mac OS Extended (Journaled)) titled Part2HFS and is 4.23GB. (I do that to be able to tell them apart in more than one way if the titles are stripped in the recovery program and just sizes show up of potentially recoverable drives.) Clicked "Apply". Ejecting from this computer with the potentially bad Windows Virtual Machine that may not read the large external drive which will be where we will transfer recovered pictures to.
I will try running the recovery program in Windows 7 x64, though it was probably made for XP x32 because I am curious if it will work. I also don't want to be stuck using XP forever.
Installing Runtime GetbackData for FAT on Windows 7 x64. I select the option for Systematic File Damage (because that is what you are apparently supposed to click if you format a drive you need to recover). It says not data could be written over it. I do not believe data was written over the section I need. My guess is if I did the next most extensive option (sustained file damage), that it would take even longer to run.
I can select the whole flash drive, or just one of the partitions. Since this is experimentation time and I want to save time on the larger actual 500GB drive (and not have it scan an extra 250GB), and I know the data would be underneath only the first partition, I will select the first partition fat32 and see if it can recover the picture folders and images hidden underneath that part of the drive. 5 minute estimate.
I am given two FAT32 partitions to choose from,
one at sector 30,616 (3.53GB) with no data listed on the right of the screen next to FAT1, FAT2, FAT root, or 1st Root Cluster.
the other below it is at sector 14,524 (3.54GB) and does have FAT1 34 (Quality=9%)... which scares me Fat2 (Quality 9%) Total clusters 928,260.
I clicked NEXT for the partition with data.
I got ..fsevesntsd which had 3 junk files in it.
Spotlight V100 with two folders in it.
[0007E5] with some junk data and two junk folders
Glad we tried that. Now I will try the partition with seemingly no data. It finished running in 5 seconds.
I see the folders listed above and TestPicFolder1 through 3. All of them have 5 pictures. I can double click and open each one. Success!
Turns out the folder is automatically created on your destination drive/folder when you select the files in a folder, and click "Copy" It asks for where I want to store them. The application will not let me copy the pictures to the \\vmware-host\Shared Folders\Desktop. It will let me copy the folders to the C drive. My virtual machines are only 40GB, so I have to use an external media for the 160ish GB of images I need to recover. I Went o Options-Environment and changed the default save directory to the FDrive (My ExFat drive... saving my FAT32 for the real thing). I just click on the folder (with the included file names shown on the right) and click copy. Then the folder gets saved to the drive I had specified. Perfect.
The file size is identical betweern the copy and the original.
I am now going back to step 1 and recovring the full 8GB drive. 10 minute estimate for 8GB.
I get FAT32 at 30,616 (7.47GB)- same sector as the other one.. Same test pics
Fat32 sector 14,263,036 (699MB)-and I found some older pictures that had been overwritten a year ago.
FAT32 sector 14,524 (3.54 GB) (same as the other)
FAT32 sector 11,467,883 (2.02 GB)
Finally doing the real thing!
Going to just to the first partition since the original files were about 150GB, estimated time is almost 7 hours for 288GB, but the countdown timer was going faster until 6:30 was left (first 2 minutes of running)
No comments:
Post a Comment