Software errors, user mistakes, viruses… can corrupt data on your hard drive. Don’t worry; the free data recovery application TestDisk is here to help you resolve these issues.
TestDisk is truly a powerful data recovery application. This software is designed to assist users in recovering data from lost hard drive partitions or making non-bootable disks bootable again if they fail due to software errors, viruses, or user errors, such as accidentally deleting the partition table.
TestDisk has features suitable for both novices and experts.
TestDisk can operate on a wide range of operating systems, from DOS to various open-source applications: DOS, 32-bit Windows (NT4, 2000, XP, 2003), Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, SunOS, and Mac OS. This ensures compatibility with many file systems across different operating systems, including:
– BeFS (BeOS)
– BSD disklabel (FreeBSD/OpenBSD/NetBSD)
– CramFS, Compressed File System
– DOS/Windows FAT12, FAT16, and FAT32
– HFS and HFS+, Hierarchical File System
– JFS, IBM’s Journaled File System
– Linux Ext2 and Ext3
– Linux RAID
– RAID 1: mirroring
– RAID 4: striped array with parity device
– RAID 5: striped array with distributed parity information
– RAID 6: striped array with distributed dual redundancy information
– Linux Swap (versions 1 and 2)
– LVM and LVM2, Linux Logical Volume Manager
– Mac partition map
– NetWare NSS
– NTFS (Windows NT/2K/XP/2003)
– ReiserFS 3.5 and 3.6
– Sun Solaris i386 disklabel
– UFS and UFS2 (Sun/BSD/…)
– XFS, SGI’s Journaled File System
Typically, TestDisk will require the BIOS and operating system to check the hard drives to compare the partition tables, and if errors are found, the application can repair them.
You can find more detailed instructions on how to use the software at
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk and download the software here.
HVD – (Lifehacker)
