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gabriel
Asked: 2012-04-11 10:06:46 +0800 CST

Recover 1TB disk erased with startup disk creator

  • 772

Hello. I was trying to make a bootable flash drive from the startup disk creator, and when I went to erase the flash drive I accidentally erased the wrong drive, a 1TB removable drive. The operation took less than a second and gave no warning. I tried erasing the flash drive and it took about a minute, but it took but a second to erase the 1 TB drive, which is very surprising.

Please help, Gabriel

data-recovery disk-management

4 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Try to recover the partition with TestDisk. Careful: don't write on the drive.

    Instructions step-by-step:

    1. Install TestDisk
    2. Mount the drive
    3. Launch sudo testdisk (eventually enlarge the terminal)
    4. Create a new log file
    5. Select the drive
    6. Select partition Table (usually Intel should be good)
    7. Analyse
    8. Quick Search (this should found only the actual partition)
    9. [Enter]
    10. Deeper Search (this should find your old partition, you can stop it after it found it) Once you found what you think it's your partition select it with up/down arrows
    11. [P] for list files and look if it seems it
    12. [q] to quit list files
    13. [Enter]
    14. Write to save new partition table to MBR.

    Look carefully: this don't overwrite / recover any data, just the MBR of the disk.

    • 6
    • First, don't panic. If necessary and if you don't need your data urgently for your thesis or for a customer, take a nap, sleep one night and come back to your drive when the pressure has fallen.
    • Second, create a copy of your drive using dd (maybe ask a good friend to be sure you are not mixing the if and of parameters). NEVER use a recovery tool directly on the drive from which you are trying to recover the data. You could lose your last chance to recover it. For that, you will need a drive bigger than the drive you try to recover. 1TB is quite big, and might be expensive for you to buy a new drive. In that case, maybe borrow a drive from a friend or wait 6 months until you save the money and/or until the drives are cheaper. If you give up now and format your drive, you might regret it in 6-12 months.
    • Third, as suggested by dadexix86, give testdisk and photorec a chance (depending on the filesystem you have on your drive and the type of files you are trying to recover). Take your time to read the documentation to see if your filesystem is supported. And have a look at the tutorials on their website. And again, don't use it directly on the drive.
    • 6

  3. Take a look at this: Is there any recovery software available for ext4?

    Placed here for your convenience:

    Take a look at this:

    Best tool to recover removed files

    Formatted and lost 6 years worth of photo memories.. any way to get this back?

    How to recover Ubuntu partition after computer failure?

    Where the answers of some other people under those questions may also be helpful for you.

    Additionally, take a look at this (quite long but it saved my life).

    Recovering deleted data from deleted partition- solved from within the Israel Linux Remix Team System.

    Good luck!

    You may also wish to take a look at this: How to recover Deleted Files and Folders?

    This last one shows how to use an easy way to bring back your partition in a few steps. After which I suggest you to back up your data and start again with your hard disk drive. (Format it and copy everything back on it).

    Oh Sorry! Good luck!

    • 1

  4. As @Matthew said install test disk. If you have a USB startup disk of Ubuntu with some space allocated for storage you can install TestDisk by the command

    sudo apt-get install testdisk

    Testdisk looks like a command-line utility. But don't panic. You need not enter weird commands. It is easy to use.

    Have this tutorial

    http://www.howtoforge.com/data_recovery_with_testdisk

    Read Ubuntu Community Documentation

    https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DataRecovery:

    Google is your friend Wish you all the best

    YOU WILL REQUIRE A LOT OF PATIENCE. SINCE YOU ARE TRYING TO RECOVER 1TERABYTE OF DATA IT MAY TAKE SEVERAL WEEKS OR MONTHS NO MATTER WHICH DATA RECOVERY SOFTWARE YOU USE

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