The official TestDisk website offers step-by-step guides on how to use the software as well as a comprehensive 60-page PDF.

Unix File System UFS and UFS2 (Sun/BSD/…).LVM and LVM2, Linux Logical Volume Manager.RAID 6: striped array with distributed dual redundancy information.

RAID 5: striped array with distributed parity information.

RAID 4: striped array with parity device.

HFS, HFS+ and HFSX, Hierarchical File System.

BSD disklabel (used with FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD).

BeFS (used for the rare BeOS operating system).

Supported file systems: TestDisk can find lost partitions on a wide range of file systems, including some that are rare and unusual:

Rebuild boot sectors of FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, and NTFS drives.

Recover the boot sector of FAT32 and NTFS drives from a backup.

Partition table recovery to fix damaged or deleted partitions.

Copy files from deleted partitions (including Windows formats such as FAT, exFAT, NTFS, and ext2/ext3/ext4 Linux formats).

Undelete files from FAT, exFAT, NTFS, and ext2 file systems on Windows and Linux computers.

That means that data recovery is never guaranteed, and acting as early as possible will offer the best chance of success. In time, as you create new files, both the directory entry and data are likely to be overwritten. It’s simply marked as being deleted and the space it occupies is now available. How is data recovery possible? When you delete a file it is not actually removed from the folder or drive that contains it. That confirms that this is a tool aimed at tech-savvy users. Mac users running recent versions of macOS will need the 64-bit version of the software, and this can only be installed using the Homebrew package manager. In this review, we’ll cover the macOS version. Windows (from XP on) and Windows server (from 2003 on).Versions for a number of operating systems can be downloaded from the official website: While it can do both, the company’s other product, PhotoRec, is more appropriate for the second task.īoth applications are distributed under the free software GPL v2+ license which means that you can use the software free of charge and share it with others. The primary use of this software is repairing and restoring partitions rather than recovering accidentally deleted files. The software can repair faults caused by faulty software, viruses, and human error, but not when the hardware itself is failing. TestDisk is a free data recovery tool designed to recover lost partitions and make non-booting disks bootable again.

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