Data recovery on External HD after wrong use of dd

obdit · 02-12-2010, 09:28 AM

As the title says, I specified the wrong out file while using the dd command to write a .img to what I thought was my thumb drive. Browsing the hard drive shows the liveOS folder but no longer any of the previous folders.

I used PhotoRec to see if I could recover the files and it was able to recover files. So the files are still there. Is there a way to get these files without having to wait for PhotoRec to work on the 500GB drive, since this will take a while.

running

Code:

fdisk -l

referring to the appropriate drive

Code:

Disk /dev/sdb: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 476940 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 = 1048576 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x26aae55b

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1   *           1         754      772096   17  Hidden HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdb1: 790 MB, 790626304 bytes
64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 754 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 = 1048576 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x26aae55b

     Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1p1   *           1         754      772096   17  Hidden HPFS/NTFS

I hope this makes sense and thanks for the help.

unSpawn · 02-12-2010, 10:42 AM

If you know how to navigate to the directory the images where in with Photorecs companion app 'testdisk' you may be able to copy out images on a per file basis. If however you require recovery of all images then there's no speedups slash selectiion option except configure Photorec to only search for specific image header slash footer combos.