Last Updated on March 4, 2026
TestDisk is a powerful open source data recovery software.
The software was designed to help recover lost partitions and/or make non-booting disks bootable again when these symptoms are caused by faulty software, certain types of viruses or human error (such as accidentally wiping a Partition Table).
TestDisk is a tool that checks the partition and boot sectors of your disks.
The software supports a number of different operating systems including Linux, BSD (FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD), Mac OS X, SunOS, Microsft Windows, and DOS.
Key Features
- Recover a deleted partition.
- Rebuild a partition table.
- EFI GPT partition backup.
- Rewrite Master boot record (MBR).
- File Allocation Table, FAT.
- FAT12 and FAT16:
- Find filesystem parameters to rewrite a valid boot sector.
- Use the two copies of the FAT to rewrite a coherent version.
- FAT file undelete.
- FAT32:
- Find filesystem parameters to rewrite a valid boot sector.
- Restore the boot sector using its backup.
- Use the two copies of the FAT to rewrite a coherent version.
- FAT file undelete.
- FAT12 and FAT16:
- NTFS:
- Find filesystem parameters to rewrite a valid boot sector.
- Restore the boot sector using its backup.
- Restore the Master File Table (MFT) from its backup.
- NTFS file undelete.
- Extended file systems, ext2 and ext3:
- Find backup superblock location to assist fsck.
- ext2 file undelete.
- Copy files from ext2/ext3 partitions.
- HFS+:
- Restore the boot sector using its backup.
- It also searches for lost partitions on BE File System, BSD disklabel, Cramfs, Windows exFAT, HFS and HSFX, JFS (IBM’s Journaled File System), Linux RAID, Linux swap, LVM and LVM2, Mac partition map, Novell Storage Services (NSS), ReisterFS, Sun Solaris, Unix File System UFS and UFS2, XFS (SGI’s Journaled File System).
Website: www.cgsecurity.org
Support: TestDisk Step By Step
Developer: Christophe Grenier and contributors
License: GNU General Public License v2.0
TestDisk is written in C. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Data Recovery Tools | |
|---|---|
| ddrescue | GNU data recovery tool |
| SystemRescue | System rescue disk |
| TestDisk | Partition scanner and disk recovery tool |
| Relax-and-Recover | Linux Disaster Recovery |
| Mondo Rescue | Tool for configuring and maintaining network machines |
| PhotoRec | Digital Picture and File Recovery |
| Rescuezilla | Complete disaster recovery solution |
| safecopy | Copy utility ignoring errors |
| Redo Rescue | Backup and recovery solution |
| Foremost | Recover files based on their headers, footers, and internal data structures |
| Scalpel | Data carving tool |
| ext4magic | Recover deleted or overwritten files |
| RevLix | Developed to recover deleted files on Linux systems |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
 Explore our comprehensive directory of recommended free and open source software. Our carefully curated collection spans every major software category.This directory is part of our ongoing series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. It features hundreds of detailed reviews, along with open source alternatives to proprietary solutions from major corporations such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. You’ll also find interesting projects to try, hardware coverage, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. Know a useful open source Linux program that we haven’t covered yet? Let us know by completing this form. |