Harddrive - HardDisk - Partition Recovery Software for Windows

[kevin]

 http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

 http://www.partition-recovery.com/





TestDisk 7.2 WIP- Running Disk Recovery on Win10 Laptop   (6th Feb 2020)

After what seems like weeks trying to set up and recover the data upon my old Maxtor external 640gig hard drive and failing for various reasons, software incompatibilities mainly.  It was time to just run the software on my win10 laptop and endure the pain of it being offline for what I imagine would be a day or so.   In reality once i'd set up Disk Drill (my initial software of choice on Windows) it only took around 5 hours to compete it's scan.   But sadly couldn't pick up the drive structure / folders and files, but it did find a lot of files.   Now we run into the age old problem with Free software, in that, it's crippled in such a way that I was only able to retrieve 500 megs from the data at one time.   Something I was totally unaware of the time of starting out on this journey.. I did mull over buying a license, but figured I'd at least try an alternative ... That being an application call TestDisk V7.2 WIP (BETA)

TestDisk is cross platform application that supports many different hard drive formats, but unlike modern windows app's it's not pretty and was designed for use from the console.   Not too worry it is fairly easy to control using the key board menus and arrow keys.    

 For me this was my first time using the software and it was initially somewhat a scary feeling, given that you could potentially DAMAGE your hard disk just as easily as you could recover it.   Which is something you need to bare in mind !  I was lucky and have been able to recover the bulk of my files from the drive.   It took the better part of a day but at least i've got something.  

The following video is me sitting in amazement that this software was able to grab the complete folder structure and filenames from the drive.   I have found some files that are broken, but the drive is sick so we shouldn't expect miracles...

 Thanks for watching and listening to my drivel !!

[kevin]

Second Hand Sata Hard Drive File Recovery


-- [ Credits ] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

   Video & Editing By:  Kevin Picone ( https://underwaredesign.com )
                                           
-- [  Music ] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 Music:  Night_Snow by Asher Fulero
              Confliction_Catharsis by Asher Fulero
              The_Closing_Of_Summer by Asher Fulero

-- [Hash Tags] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  #harddisk #recovery #secondhand


 

   Script / English Captions
 

Code Select Expand



hi in today's video we'll be looking at

doing a file recovery of a secondhand

hard drive the drive was purchased at a

local retailer as we refurbished so I'm

actually wonder just how much stuff is

on a refurbished drive if anything I

don't know let's check it out before we

start I just want to let you know that

this videos was recorded on my phone and

a screen capture as well to go with it

the screen capture seems to have been

lost so there's a few times the video

where I'll be referring to the screen

and you probably might be iris said

fortunately though that's a very small

amount of it the rest of its appearing

in camera it's not the best video you're

ever going to say on the subject but I

thought it was actually worthwhile

putting up the way it is you know thanks

for your patience and try to make sure

we don't delete files I shouldn't delete

a guy in the future the irony of that is

not lost on me yesterday I picked up by

a small secondhand SATA drive from the

local retailer obviously a refurb drive

apparently it's tested as okay

it's a seat drive it's 250 gigabyte

so in 2020 that's kind of small but what

I was curious about was is when they

when they say it's okay what they do the

drive

and what date it was on it before I got

it that's what we're gonna find out

to do that I'm just going to use one of

these SATA USB adapters it's up here

look in the front there and we can fly

rate this one's a accom sell us Bay 3

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okay just plugs anybody guys think I

need to plug a power cable in this as

well

and actually what I'm pretty sure of is

that they probably didn't delete all the

day off the drive it's pretty common so

I'll see if it's actually in a readable

state straight away I don't think I've

got an idea about that

why are you miss Veda

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Ross

as we expected we're not getting

anything it looks like a dr popping up

are we

you can't go down here to your USB yeah

hoping devices I click on my USB device

here and look at hardware yep it does

actually say the hard drive

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so I'll bet the petition day was

probably deleted possibly replaced maybe

and a day was and the drivers just put

back out for resale that's a problem

because these days recovery tools are so

good and they are so easy to come by

let's take a quick look at one called

this drill I don't you can see the

screen and you obviously can't see the

screen but it's showing us that we

actually have this secondary drive steel

speed right here has popped up

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now what we're interested in here is

this this drive entry here looks about

right doesn't saying it's called St 250

MD whatever

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recovery business search for lost

partitions it's our work

okay search for lost data I've done this

with other drives but this one before so

but I got feeling is that they probably

didn't destroy all the data to the drive

and that would be quite common so if

you're you're upgrading your computer

you're trading your old computer in be

mindful that the data on that drive is

probably recoverable so if you have

backing down on their personal photos

that's nothing like that I'm not saying

this will work with this drive maybe

they've completely form out of it and

destroyed all the existing data before

it was put back on back on sale but it's

quite common

right tomorrow when we found

as telling us it's found two lost

petitions on that drive which is empty a

minute ago can we say you've got a 500

meet petition which Masterson's our

recovery regular petition and it's

probably the windows position search for

lost data

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and you can say it's found a bunch of

files of rain

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found review found items okay so what

what are these things it's finding and I

just be junk and they might not be real

files at all

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that's like real data domain users

public user account pictures downloads

there's only much in them which is good

so hopefully a person I did destroy the

day before they gave the driver which is

fine what I want to get to is actually

what you can do as a strategy for not

destroying the drive before you try an

enol or sell it or something like that

is that you need to fill up the drive

full of junk and then delete my stuff

and they'd fill up the drive full of

junk again that's the reason for that

it's the way that hard drives

alakay

blocks to fart or pieces of data pieces

at their storage area to each farm

because your files are not stored as

there's one file actually stored as lots

of small fragments across the hard drive

itself

okay I was letting gigabyte of stuff

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it's in Provence desktop explore our

Cowan files looks like a pretty clean we

knows it doesn't so actually today I'm

not an expert on the house sucks things

yes you must Falls room in destitution

here

we're in Falls not much in that

since we feel eight videos 175

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well windows has a lot of teachers with

it

it's a lot of stock me

confounds me fire

well that does that let's go on to how

this is room this is possible

let's have a quick talk about how hard

drives work your hard drive when it's

formatted the you might realize that the

hard drive resembles something that

looks like a record internally there's

multiple discs so it has multiple heads

on each surface this disk surface the

head is stepping you out just a spinning

in this direction head hovers over a

certain part portion of the disc picks

up a little block of information now

it's easy to think about hard drives as

being a big collection of blocks all

these little block fragments when the

drive is initially set up or initialized

all of the space available on it is in

the free list there's a there's kind of

two lists two ways you can think about

hard drives all the free spaces all

linked together so there's little tiny

blocks which are about I guess it

depends on what kind of hard drive

you've got all the age of the drive look

let's say there that there 32k so

they're quite small in terms of

what modern file sizes are so what

actually happens is when we store we're

on our computer and we go to to store

data to the hard drive the operating

system requests a bunch of these free

blocks where they are on the drive this

block here might be over here this one

here it might be over there that one

there might be somewhere else or the

driver entirely because the the drive is

spinning so it can't just store all the

data in a consecutive run around that

location there might be something else

already stored there or it might be just

the end of this particular section here

so the data gets stored across wherever

this free space is found initially when

the drivers mph should all be

consecutively what say it's not this is

what defragmentation is all about

fragmentations about when we saw a file

it we're going to save a file onto our

hard drive it's grabbing from this free

list of places here and then stores a

bit of the data from the file of this

location and this was the next bit of

the data at this location the next bit

of it over here when we reload it the

hard drive spins up again it finds the

first part then jumps to the next part

jumps to that part and that's so on if

we store the same file again if we try

and save us the file over the top of

each other and what's likely to happen

here is it's going to not overwrite

these blocks first it's going to grab

three new blocks and which might be

anywhere there might be over here let's

say they're over there

what these three blocks here at

representatives over here right so our

file is rewritten and it gets stored at

this location here this block points to

that block there links to that block

there and our data is stored in that

sequence of blocks then what the

operating system will do is it will

unlink or dull would remove these

existing blocks of the old file and put

them back in the free space so we kind

of have these two there's two heaps

we've got used blocks in a heap over

here right and this is what files are

made up of in in any order it can be

whatever it wants and we've got a free

list of blocks over here now we're doing

a very scaled-down version of it but

that's pretty much what's happening but

this kind of free space yeah which is

free space is just blocks it yet used by

the you the user or someone else but the

files are used as well and this use used

heap over here so it knows not to not to

store data in these blocks here when we

save something new because that would

destroy existing information we don't

want that that creates a problem when we

go to delete files or completely throw

away old hard drives for example

is that you might find yourself in need

of updating your system might run

through and delete a file the house your

banking data room let's say this one and

that file might have been stored in this

location at the desk here the operating

system will will release these currently

used blocks which would be stored over

here somewhere

they'll be put back onto the free heap

now it depends on your hard drive the

drivers etc but how the software chooses

to do this but this is a very yeah

that's a problem what it doesn't do it

when it releases these old blocks cuz it

doesn't erase them it doesn't it there's

no point for it to go back through this

hole currently recently free blocks and

clear those blocks out which means that

if you use a piece of software like

we're using here this disk drill

software it can look through and find

files that are that were in the used

heap but I can also look through files

that are in this old free heap as well

and see if they make any sense there are

tools that actually do a very good job

with this reconstruction just Hallie's

kind of undelete programs were

so when it follows deleted that data on

the disk is not destroyed which means

that you have things like your banking

day or or you know your your pictures or

your video so that kids on whatever you

have on your on your computer what you

really need to do is you need to once

you once you've backed up all your

information off this computer you've

copied it from this computer to your new

computer when you're happy that you've

got all the data

there's no rush about this stuff once

you once you're happy you've got all

then you go okay I want to I want to

delete these files and then deliberately

store junk on the hard drive and fill

the whole hard drive up this doesn't

guarantee that data cannot be recovered

because what you'll find is very small

files can be have many copies for

themselves in other blocks which is a

pain in the backside whether that's true

for all hard drives I don't know whether

you know whether very skilled hard drive

recovery companies could actually find

data on on drives that have been

overwritten entirely that's a question

for debate I don't know maybe it's

possible maybe it isn't

maybe with certain brands it's more

possible than others don't

and recovery unless that computer over

here is go saying city key files

this is seem to be actually just nothing

of any real interest to anyone else but

it looks more like just to pretty much

fresh install of Windows with maybe a

few applications install as well that's

pretty good we've got on on them for

going through the trouble of getting

roof through old data

there's probably applications that that

do file destroying you want to run this

stuff on your nice new computer

obviously but you certainly on a

computer you're getting rid of that's

probably the best best way in when we

format a drive these fast format methods

they don't actually clean out all the

data in the free blocks when the data is

where drivers in its initial ditch life

State they're not empty these blocks

aren't lots of information that on the

disk they're not empty at all so we need

to go through them and write data to it

you might grab some video editing

software or something like that and dump

some big files you know just keep doing

that until a hard drive is full

once you're happy with that make sure

you've deleted every bit of content of

yours office drive generate some more

you know just use the useless data and

then maybe try a disk recovery over it

see if you can find any old files and

then once you're happy get rid of it I

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think in this case here that person's

probably don't okay they haven't

actually unwittingly my dogs getting

rather round actually yes very good

writes only found 25 gear right of files

they don't understand it windows files

to be honest nothing special there this

does think we found a bunch of video

files anyway we might stop that there

and hopefully it gives you something to

think about you know when you upgrading

your old computer giving away your old

computer whatever you happen to do put

some thought into destroying the old

data that's on it you don't want to be a

victim of just convenience sometimes I

mean that's come more convenient not to

do that or it's convenient to assume

that the people on me you're selling

this thing to or won't book

or if you're upgrading your computer to

a store or trying it into a store then

you would think that they wouldn't

wouldn't allow that in the first place

but as you can tell in this case here

that that's that's a real thing there

but luckily we haven't found anything

that's very incriminating and I'm not

going to sue so I will drive because I

don't really don't I don't want to know

what time it is

thanks for watching hopefully it give me

something to think about and I'll catch

it up so all the time but

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you