I want to get data from an old hardrive and move it to my nas. The problem is i cant read the hardrive any more. Its either exfat or fat32. It was originally created on windows. The problem is i cant mount it because there is no partition on the hardrive. I couldnt mount the hardrive on windows and macos, but i still could over my arch distro. Sadly i reinstalled my arch and now it wont mount anymore. Im certain the data is still there. Does anyone have an idea how to mount it without a partition
Disk /dev/sdb: 465,76 GiB, 500107861504 bytes, 976773167 sectors
Disk model: Desktop
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 33553920 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x7d4c57eb
In that case, there is no filesystem in that drive, and then I’m afraid whatever data was on there is gone.
It is highly uncommon to put a filesystem on a hard drive without partitioning it first. It can be done, but only if you know what you’re doing, and the drive wouldn’t be bootable.
Pretty sure, I say pretty, like 99% sure, that if there is no partition the data is corrupted or even worse, gone.
Someone in another thread about data recovery recommended TestDisk to recover data.
This seems like something you might want to try.
Otherwise, there is always the trick of removing and recreating a partition, but that assumes you know exactly where the partition was before.
Disk /dev/sdb - 500 GB / 465 GiB - CHS 60801 255 63
Partition Start End Size in sectors
P exFAT 0 0 1 60801 80 62 976773167
Boot sector
exFAT OK
Backup boot record
exFAT OK
Sectors are not identical.