Sekolah Linux Indonesia

I found this guidance on the web and I think it might be usefull for linux users, testdisk will help you to recover file and also repair your disk from bad sector. Please see vendor website for use of testdisk.

Installation and Usage:

1. You can download directly to the vendor’s website (link download will appear in the bottom of this article) and choose the Operating System you have used. I am using OS SUSE Linux 11.0. For speed installation, I choose RPM package file Linux i386.

2. After downloading these files, click testdisk-6.10-1.i386.rpm and type your password as a root user, you can wait while the installation is in process. To check the testdisk has been installed or not, just type ‘rpm -qa | grep testdisk‘ (without quote) in the console window. TestDisk-6.10-1 has been successfully installed.

3. Still in Console window, login as a root and type ‘su‘ (without quote) then type your root password, type ‘testdisk‘ (without quote). TestDisk 6.10 Data Recovery Utility will run. Press Enter.

4. Testdisk will detect your storage media/hard drive include my flashdisk Kingston DT Mini Slim. In this case I want to recover my files which have been deleted from my Flashdisk. Choose media using the Arrow keys on your keyboard, then press Enter.

5. Choose the partition type, I choose Intel.

6. Choose Analyse, then press Enter.

7. Choose Quick Search, then press Enter.

8. Type ‘Y‘ (without quote)

9. Press Enter.

10. Type ‘P‘ (without quote) to List/Preview Files

11. You can see, there are 2 different color text in the Console window, Red and White text, the red text is mean the deleted files (which will be restored soon) and the white text is mean the currently files. Type ‘h‘ (without quote) to hide the red text if you want.

12. Select the files you want to restore then press ‘c‘ (without quote) to copy it, and choose the destination of files you want to copy it to, using Arrow keys, then press ‘y‘ (without quote) to confirm the copy process.

13. To copy another files you can select the files and press ‘c‘ (without quote) again, this process is absolutely simple, it’s not difficult. 14. Well done, you have recovered/restored your deleted files.

Note : The usage of Testdisk is not limited for recovery deleted files only. According to the vendor’s website, you can use this tool to repairing harddisk which have bad sector, repairing hard disk which can not boot or bootable, etc. I hope in the next article I will try to explore the usage of this tool more deeper than before.

You can also run test disk on debian linux, mandrake linux or ubuntu linux as well.