Need good, free partition recovery software.

[Pepper]

I'm posting this in the computers forum instead of the FTA forum, though it is FTA related.

I have a Coolsat 7100 microPVR. Attached to this is a USB hard drive. I am pretty sure the Coolsat uses FAT32, however if I connect the USB drive to my computer it says there are no partitions. I believe the root cause of this issue is that the drive had not been partitioned before I first connected it to the Coolsat. It appears to have created a partition that it can see, but not populated the partition table on the disk.

Other drives that have been partitioned prior to attaching to the PVR and formatting work fine.

What I'm looking for is something that will search the drive for data, figure out what partitions should exist, and rebuild the partition table. Preferably free. What do you guys use for this type of task?

 

[Jared Twomey]

i'm not quite sure what you are trying to do, but if you can hook it up to a pc for a few minutes to do the partitioning... google Gparted
open source partioning program that runs off of a cd, i use it all the time and it works great

 

[Pepper]

Yeah, I'm looking for something I can run on the pc that will figure out why there's not a partition table and build it, figuring out from the data on the disk where the partition(s) actually are.

With the coolsat, I can save settings to the hard drive, but it offers no ability to delete such files. Without the pc detecting a partition I can't use that either. It's become annoying because every time I power the drive on, the coolsat detects the old settings files and offers to restore them. Plus, I'm supposed to be able to do something with the .ts files recorded on there but obviously they are inaccessible to my pc.

 

[Pepper]

Still need some help here. Anyone got another idea? Gparted sounds good for creating and manipulating partitions, but I don't want to create a new empty partition, I want to resurrect one that already has stuff in it.

 

[snathanb]

I am pretty sure the Coolsat uses FAT32, however if I connect the USB drive to my computer it says there are no partitions.

What are you using to determine that?

 

[JAG72]

You might want to look at TestDisk.

TestDisk - CGSecurity

I have never used it but it might do what you are wanting.

 

[Pepper]

What are you using to determine that?

Simple. I have two USB hard drives. One I partitioned on the computer beforehand the other I did not. Both drives when initially connected to the receiver, it needed to format them.

Now, the drive that I partitioned beforehand, it formatted as FAT32. That one I can verify by plugging into my computer. I can only presume it did the same to the other one, but since there's no partition information I can't know for sure.

 

[goaliebob99]

If you have vista or a computer that uses NTFS you can you the Disk managment snap in under computer managment and it should be able to do everything you need it to do Its free too

Do a google search on disk manamgent snap in.

 

[Pepper]

Sorry Bob, I wouldn't be on the search I am now if those type of tools had worked. If I create a partition in Windows it will need to be formatted. Doing so would lose all the data.

The partition is there, I'm looking for something that will figure that out and rebuild the partition table. Testdisk looks promising, I'm trying that now.

 

[Smith P.]

The USB drive could had tricky sectors; what I did - after lost MBR/partition actually 1000+ first sectors ( ESD ? ), I got same 4 GB stick, format it as FAT32, then using WinHex copied MBR/part sectors; now the biggest problem - first FAT is half empty, hope second copy is updated, so will copy it and see how files will be accessible. I did check - root and all subdirs are OK. There is a lot utiliites to scan and restore formatted or badly damaged disks - Norton, Seagate tool, etc.

 

[snathanb]

Sorry Bob, I wouldn't be on the search I am now if those type of tools had worked. If I create a partition in Windows it will need to be formatted. Doing so would lose all the data.

The partition is there, I'm looking for something that will figure that out and rebuild the partition table. Testdisk looks promising, I'm trying that now.

May want to sort through the list here...

Free Partition Editors, Managers and Recovery (Partitioning Software) (thefreecountry.com)

 

[diu.steve]

Simple. I have two USB hard drives. One I partitioned on the computer beforehand the other I did not. Both drives when initially connected to the receiver, it needed to format them.

Now, the drive that I partitioned beforehand, it formatted as FAT32. That one I can verify by plugging into my computer. I can only presume it did the same to the other one, but since there's no partition information I can't know for sure.

Maybe your Coolsat supports more than one filesystem type. It could be that if no partition table/filesystem is detected then it formats the drive in its default type, maybe ext2fs/ext3fs (linux).

Try this useful CD out, lots and lots of hard drive tools, among lots of other tools.
Ultimate Boot CD - Overview

I must note, however, I don't know if this CD has support for external hard drives. Nonetheless, its very useful to have around even if it doesn't.

 

[Smith P.]

Coolsat dealers outlined FAT type FS on that flash drives.

 

[justin87]

I have recently used Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery recovery software.It helps me to recover all my data. You can try its very easy to use and provides complete recovery solution.This data recovery is powered by ‘Raw File Recovery’ feature that recognizes & recovers more than 300 file types including documents, spreadsheets, web content and images.

 

[Pepper]

well thanks for the input. I'll keep all suggestions in mind for next time.

Unfortunately, the various experimenting with these tools left me worse off than before and I ended up wiping and reformatting. At this point I don't remember what specifically was on there that I wanted to keep, so it must not have been too important.

 

[hendrix04]

Just wanted to let you know for future reference, linux can read drives that windows cant.

I had a hard drive that all windows wanted to do with it was format it (which i knew there was data on it because it was a C drive on my sister's XP machine). I booted up Puppy Linux (a version of linux that just boots from a CD and runs in your memory) and it was able to read most things on the hard drive (other than the things that had caused the errors in the first place).

 

[Pepper]

Well it happened again. I think the Coolsat has a glitch where sometimes it wipes the master partition table, though the partition is still there at least the way it can find it.

This time I tried "getdataback" from Data Recovery Software - Hard Drive Recovery - RAID Data Recovery. The FAT version found everything. Unfortunately not free but it works.