1 Topic by pete5392

  • pete5392
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Topic: Device > attempting to recover data.

I'm new to data recovery and gparted. If this has been answered elsewhere please point me gently in the right direction.

I am attempting to recover data from a 1000 Gbyte connected to by usb3 to a system running Linux Mint 19.3.

On the gparted screen the disk shows as "unallocated 931GiB"

at the bottom of the screen it shows "searching for filesystems on /dev/sdg  (which is correct) with a "green" bar
moving from side to side.

It has now been running for approx 18 hours. Is it working and I'm just being impatient or isn't it?

If it is running is it possible to give a rough estimated as to how long it will take. Would
it be better to close it down and try another program. If yes, recommendations please.

2 Reply by mfleetwo

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Re: Device > attempting to recover data.

Device > Attempt Data Rescue is using the gpart (repository) command line tool to scan the disk looking for file systems and guessing partition boundaries.  Unfortunately it doesn't provide feedback on progress and is known to be very slow.

I did a quick test of gpart on the command line.  On a small 7.46 GiB test drive that my machine can read in 1m19s (97 MiB/s), gpart takes 11m22s (11 MiB/s) to scan.  If my drive was 931 GiB, the same size as yours, it would take gpart ~24 hours to scan it.

Be very patient.


It might be that Device > Attempt Data Rescue isn't the best way to recover your lost data.  Do you know (approximately) what partitions / file system types the drive contained, and how it came to be lost?

3 Reply by pete5392

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Re: Device > attempting to recover data.

mfleetwo wrote:

I did a quick test of gpart on the command line.  On a small 7.46 GiB test drive that my machine can read in 1m19s (97 MiB/s), gpart takes 11m22s (11 MiB/s) to scan.  If my drive was 931 GiB, the same size as yours, it would take gpart ~24 hours to scan it.

Be very patient.


It might be that Device > Attempt Data Rescue isn't the best way to recover your lost data.  Do you know (approximately) what partitions File system types the drive contained, and how it came to be lost?

Thank for the reply.

Probably NTFS. It was purely a backup/ storage disk. I made the mistake of connecting it as a usb hdd to a
Panasonic DMR-BWT720. To use it, it needed registering, what it didn't say on screen but did in the small
print in the operating manual registering would delete previously recorded contents.

My fault, should have RTFM.  I'm being very, very patient.

It has now been running for 36 hours + Should I persevere?

4 Reply by mfleetwo

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Re: Device > attempting to recover data.

Cancel / kill it.

I assume the Panasonic recorder registration process creates a new file system over the top of the old one. Therefore any partition and file system that Attempt Data Rescue (gpart) could find will be the new one written by the Panasonic recorder.


I suspect the only chance at recovering files would be to use Photorec.  It reads the drive, ignoring the file system layout, looking for data it can recognise as known file types.  Recognises lots of archive, media and office type documents.

5 Reply by pete5392

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Re: Device > attempting to recover data.

mfleetwo wrote:

Cancel / kill it.

I assume the Panasonic recorder registration process creates a new file system over the top of the old one. Therefore any partition and file system that Attempt Data Rescue (gpart) could find will be the new one written by the Panasonic recorder.


I suspect the only chance at recovering files would be to use Photorec.  It reads the drive, ignoring the file system layout, looking for data it can recognise as known file types.  Recognises lots of archive, media and office type documents.

Thanks for the reply.

I've cancelled it.  I'll try Photorec next, thanks for the tip.

Help appreciated.

6 Reply by class413

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Re: Device > attempting to recover data.

Another idea:
Perhaps "testdisk" can scan the hard drive and find info about old partitions and you could give it a try. Testdisk is included in GParted live as well as in other tool/rescue live media (e.g. System Rescue CD). You can find it also in the same web site as photorec (see link above, by mfleetwo).
Testdisk tries to find and restore old partitions. Photorec tries to recover files, in case where the partition / filesystem is unrecoverable.

*** It is highly recommended to backup any important files before doing resize/move operations. ***