Analyzes a drive's current partition structure and searches partition making it possible to recover lost partitions.
TestDisk assumes the existence of partitions and scans all relevant drive cylinders for them. A primary partition starts at the beginning of a cylinder (head=0, sector=1), while a logical partition starts a little further along (head=1, sector=1). For each possible partition starting location, TestDisk can search for the presence of a filesystem header (FAT or NTFS boot sector, EXT2/EXT3 superblock, BSD disklabel...), which confirms the presence of a known partition type. Thus, the size of a partition is determined directly from its structure on the disk. Each partition that TestDisk discovers is added to a list of found partitions.
Once the analysis is complete, TestDisk generates a report of found partitions.
You can list files of FAT/EXT2/EXT3/RFS partition by pressing P (FAT directory listing is limited to 5 clusters, some files may not appears).
You can also change the partition type with T or add another partition with A. With the left/right arrow key, you can change the status of the selected partition between Primary, * bootable, Logical, Deleted. Structure: Ok should appear if everything is ok, i.e. no primary partition between two extended, one or less bootable partition, no partition using the same disk space.
TestDisk gives the user a choice of writing that data to the drive's Partition Table, or of running a more detailed analysis
Quit
Quits (exits) from the TestDisk program without making any changes (unless you pressed the ENTER key while Write was 'highlighted').
Search!
TestDisk is an intuitive program. When you ask it to search for the existence of any possible partitions on the drive, it will automatically set the options to the most effective settings.
Write
Writes the changes that have been made in TestDisk's memory buffer to the hard drive. If you are unsure of the changes (often to the MBR's Partition Table), then don't use this function!
Anyway TestDisk ask you to confirm the Write operation.
Back to Running the TestDisk Program