how to run testdisk.exe on a dd image of a 2TB hard drive

Question

BACKGROUND INFO:

I have (2) 2TB hard drives.

• HD1 - I hosed the MBR, drive won't mount, can't see data, but it must be there because I didn't do anything much to it except with testdisk

• HD2 - was empty, made a dd image backup of HD1 to this drive. Although dd ran out of space it said? Took roughly 16 hrs to complete this task. The first drive was less than 1.5 TB's in actual data though so hopefully it captured it all?

The data on the first drive (and hopefully on the dd image on the second drive) is my entire life's work and is quite irreplaceable. I really need these files (mostly raw photo images, TIFs, JPG's, home movies, my entire album collection in MP3 format, my entire DVD collection in MP4 format, etc)

QUESTION:

How do I recover my data from the dd image on the second drive? It's just a humongous dd image file sitting there not a clue what to do with it.

Solution

)

Boot into a system (live CD?) and use testdisk to access the image. Leave HD1 in peace. (Do not mount or touch in any way). Confirm that that's the case please

Read the guide by the makers of testdisk.

Start testdisk rescue.dd. Analyse the partition table and post the result in your question.

Comments

[wardr]

OK I've been running "analyize" on it for like 3 hrs, it's at 80%. It did find some weird stuff though. I still can't figure out how to write the code properly in these comments. do you do it 'like this' ?

[DrSAR]

no. they are called backticks. on UK keyboards they are at the top left. Us keyboards have them on the tilde key. looks like this: ` and not like this ' ... In your answers you can simple indent them (press the <$> symbol above the edit field) unless you want to inline the code into running text like I did in my answer.

[wardr]

okay well testdisk said it could not recover any of the partitions even though I was staring at them. I'm thinking this is because it ran out of room and had no where to write anything I would recover? It seems as if I need to come up with a 3TB hard drive somewhere you think? @drsar

[DrSAR]

How about the deeper search: cgsecurity.org/wiki/…

[wardr]

I'm not really sure on the procedure on how to do that. Although I do have an empty 1 TB external USB drive.

[wardr]

okay i purchased a 3TB usb drive. gonna just return it when I

[wardr]

okay i purchased a 3TB usb drive. gonna just return it when I hopefully get through this ridiculous process. @drsar