TestDisk

TestDisk is an open source data recovery utility that runs exclusively from the command-line interface and allows users to check and undelete partitions from a given hard disk drive.

Features at a glance

If you accidentally deleted a partition, or if your computer’s hard disk drive was damaged by a certain type of virus or faulty software, with TestDisk you can easily recover lost partitions, as well as to make hard disk drives bootable again.

It can be used to repair partition tables and recover deleted partitions, fix FAT tables, recover boot sectors from NTFS and FAT32 backups, rebuild the boot sector of FAT12, FAT16, FAT32 and NTFS filesystems, and repair Master File Table using MFT mirror.

In addition, TestDisk can locate backup superblocks of the EXT2, EXT3 and EXT4 filesystems, undelete deleted files from EXT2, exFAT, NTFS and FAT filesystems, as well as to copy files from deleted EXT2, EXT3, EXT4, FAT, exFAT and NTFS partitions.

Supports a wide range of filesystems and operating systems

The application supports numerous filesystems, including FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, exFAT, FATX, EXT2, EXT3, EXT4, Btrfs, GFS2, LUKS, RAID, LVM, LVM2, NSS, ReiserFS, XFS, SWAP (version 1 and 2), CramFSm Netware, NTFS, UFS, UFS2, HFS, HFS+, HFSX, JFS, ZFS, WBFS, and BeFS.

It can successfully run under Linux, BSD (FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD), DOS, Windows (NT4, 2000, XP, 2003, Vista, 2008, Windows 7 (x86 & x64)), Mac OS X and SunOS operating systems.

Also includes PhotoRec

Few know that the developer of this handy software also included a second utility in the same package, called PhotoRec, designed to be used for digital picture and file recovery tasks from damaged hard disk drives.

Whether you know your way around data recovery tasks, or this is your first time when you try to undelete lost partitions and recover deleted data, TestDisk has been designed to be easily used by novice and expert users alike.

What is new in this release:

• Improvements:
• exFAT: better support
• ext4: handle 64 bit blocks or 64 KiB blocksize. Fix detection and file listing
• Bug fixes:
• Avoid erroneous error when writing 512 bytes on hard disk using 4k sector
• FAT, NTFS: avoid NULL pointer dereference if localtime() returns NULL. Thanks to Graham Sutherland for reporting this bug.

What is new in version 6.14.2:

• General Improvements:
• The log file generated by the Windows version (cygwin) reports bad sectors in a more readable fashion, example: ReadFile Data error (cyclic redundancy check).
• As openssl isn't used, don't link with this cryptographic library (Debian tries to avoid mixing GPL code and openssl)
• TestDisk:
• Improvements:
• testdisk /list now displays the disk model, serial number, firmware version and hpa or dco presence if detected
• Recover WBFS (Wii Backup File System) partition
• Make FAT RebuildBS works when there is a single FAT table
• Interface: Display the partition table type if autodetected
• Interface: modified warning about mismatching geometry between FAT or NTFS boot sector and HD geometry information (Debian #651756)
• Interface: Remove "Allow partial last cylinder" option
• Bug fixes:
• Fix crc in EFI backup GPT
• Rewrote how TestDisk aligns partition on cylinder or 1MB boundary. It avoids to create partition entry where the partition ends after the end of the disk.
• PhotoRec:
• Improvements:
• Improve Olympus .orf recovery
• Improve WP Mac/WP5/WP6 Corel Documents .wpd files recovery
• Fix thumbs.db recovery, avoid some false positive with .doc
• Interface: if less than 10 file families are enabled, display the results even if zero has been found yet
• New file formats:
• .aep After Effects
• .axx AxCrypt
• .dp Designer, a Photobook Designer Software
• .lzh archive
• .mmap MindManager
• .plt Gerber Graphix Advantage
• .prproj Adobe Premiere project
• .psb Adobe Photoshop Image
• .pts PTGui, panoramic stitching software
• .qcp The QCP File Format and Media Types for Speech Data (RFC3625)
• .shn Shorten audio file
• .snt Windows Sticky Notes
• .ttd TinyTag Data
• .wallet Armory bitcoin wallet
• .wim Windows imaging (WIM) image
• Bug fixes:
• Fix an endless loop during .caf file recovery
• Fix tiff recovery including some raw file formats, 64-bit version wasn't affected

What is new in version 6.11.3:

• TestDisk EFI GPT partition backup