# How to mount FreeBSD HDD in Windows XP



## Jonne (May 2, 2010)

Hi.

I ripped out my HDD from my Panasonic DVR-645H harddiscrecorder/DVD in order to recover a deleted recording using my PC with Windows XP. The problem is that the HDD isnÂ´t recognized by XP...

What to do?

Can I install FreBSD and recover from there?

Thanks in advanced, John.


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## Carpetsmoker (May 2, 2010)

UFSExplorer is the best program I know to read UFS disks. It is not free though...
Sooner or later someone will point out ffsdrv, so I'll preemptively say that is not a stable solution.

You can also try using photorec to recover your recording, it is filesystem agnostic. The disadvantage of it is that it can't recover filenames, only data.


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## Jonne (May 2, 2010)

OK.
UFS Explorer didnÂ´t support the 386BSD partition...
I canÂ´t access the disc...

Anyone else? Or is it NOT a FreeBSD partition?


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## SIFE (May 2, 2010)

http://sourceforge.net/projects/ffsdrv/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ufs2tools/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ffsundelete/
this may help .


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## Carpetsmoker (May 2, 2010)

> Anyone else? Or is it NOT a FreeBSD partition?



I don't know, you said you removed it from a TV, it's possible they use UFS I guess ... Also remember there are different flavors of UFS and FreeBSD != BSD.
I would try mounting it from a FreeBSD install, if you don't have one handy you can use the FreeBSD LiveFS.

You can try using something like `#  head -c 8192 /dev/ad0s | strings | less` and see what pops up.


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## fbsd1 (May 3, 2010)

Plug that HD into your Freebsd PC and issue `fdisk /dev/xxx` and see what the sysid value is. A value of 12 is windows, 165 is freebsd, If value is something else do google search on sysid=that value. That will tell you if the HD is really some unix flavor. If not you are S.O.L.


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## Carpetsmoker (May 3, 2010)

That will just read the fdisk, there is no official standard on partition ID's, and even if there would be one then some TV is free to break the standard.
It might also be possible that there is no partition table and that fdisk will just read some random bytes at random locations and that it just happens to report BSD/i386.

Which is why I suggest looking at what is actually on the drive, rather than accepting what is reported to be on the drive. Important difference


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## Jonne (May 4, 2010)

*Solved*

I used UFS Explorer and it found my HDD but couldnÂ´t show the files in it. But it could recover the deleted files I was looking for!
Thank you everyone for your effort to solve this for me! :e


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