testdisk finds lost NTFS partition but after reboot fails to mount Topic is solved

[hmhxxx]

Hello all,

Would appreciate your advice on next actions.

I have a 2014 USB 3.0 500 GB Toshiba canvio external hard drive (model DTB fac: C A).
When I plugged in my Toshiba drive on my Xubuntu desktop, the drive was not being detected by gparted though Disks showed "Toshiba External USB 3.0 (0001)",
500 GB /dev/sdc with contents unknown.
Attached to an (old) Win 10 Pro SL500 thinkpad the partition is seen only under Disk Management as unallocated, with no drive letter, and one cannot be assigned without initializing the disk.

But the test version of DiskInternals NTFS Partition Recovery tool displayed the partition contents (over 200 GBs of backups) correctly, and
TestDisk (as administrator) identifies:
"NTFS, blocksize=4096, 500GB/465GiB.
Start End Size
0 32 33 60801 15 4 976766974 sectors
Toshiba External USB 3.0
CHS 60801 255 63
sector size 512"

TestDisk sees the same filenames (drive E:) and follows down to subfolders correctly.
There seemed to be the opportunity to copy files to another drive, but too much data to copy?
I wrote the partition information to the disk, but on reboot:
"scanning & repairing drive (C:)", and still unallocated disk with no drive letter."You must initialize..."

Booting under xubuntu, gparted reports" Libparted errors during read on /dev/sdc" and sees the contents as "unallocated" with "unrecognised disk label".
Data recovery... faills ("No file systems found").

Thanks in advance for any suggestions. (The commercial product? very expensive).

Harry

[cgrenier]

Run "cmd" (right click run as administrator) and "chkdsk /f e:". What is the result ?

[hmhxxx]

C:\Windows\system32>chkdsk /f e:

"Cannot open volume for direct access."

[hmhxxx]

Most grateful for earlier and any further suggestions.

Run "cmd" (right click run as administrator) and "chkdsk /f e:". What is the result ?

Wondered if my virus checker or the commercial software had locked access to the volume, so
attached external HD to a different Win 10 PC.

now there is a better response:

C:\Windows\system32>chkdsk /f "\\?\Volume{c5255b45-e174-4232-8d0e-e823e3925a60}"
The type of the file system is FAT32.
Volume Serial Number is 8836-A352
Windows is verifying files and folders...
File and folder verification is complete.

Windows has scanned the file system and found no problems.
No further action is required.

104,026,112 bytes total disk space.
165,888 bytes in 7 hidden files.
52,224 bytes in 46 folders.
32,222,208 bytes in 139 files.
71,584,768 bytes available on disk.

1,024 bytes in each allocation unit.
101,588 total allocation units on disk.
69,907 allocation units available on disk.

C:\Windows\system32>diskpart

Microsoft DiskPart version 10.0.18362.1

Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation.
On computer: DESKTOP-DFK51E2

DISKPART> List Disk

Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
-------- ------------- ------- ------- --- ---
Disk 0 Online 465 GB 1024 KB *
Disk 1 Online 119 GB 0 B *
Disk 2 Online 931 GB 0 B
Disk 3 Online 465 GB 465 GB

DISKPART> Select Disk 3

Disk 3 is now the selected disk.

DISKPART> List partition

There are no partitions on this disk to show.

Disk 3 is the problem TOSHIBA external 500 GB drive,
disk 2 is a later version Toshiba external 1 TB drive.
Disk 3 still has no drive letter and "Cannot open volume for direct access."

Note chkdsk identifies the file system as FAT32, not NTFS as identified by testdisk. Does this require me to adjust (under Advanced) within testdisk?
I don't think Win10 has ever read this drive successfully. It was used previously under Windows 7 / Win 8 (but now lists the same error).

Re-running testdisk found the same partition as previously. Conducting a "Deeper Search" listed a number of responses:



I don't know what to make of this.

[hmhxxx]

For the three images of testdisk screens:
https://ibb.co/album/xJBfMB


https://ibb.co/SR7Xp6W
https://ibb.co/q9jWbN5
https://ibb.co/GJkGr1c

tia, much appreciated

[hmhxxx]

I'm reviewing this thread, very similar issues.
viewtopic.php?t=3562

[hmhxxx]

So found it worked to select folders and copy to the testdisk base folder, for on copy to an external drive.
Saved all needed files successfully.
thanks for a fine product.