Cannot find certain folders (My Documents) in Partition Recovery

How to use TestDisk to recover lost partition
Forum rules
When asking for technical support:
- Search for posts on the same topic before posting a new question.
- Give clear, specific information in the title of your post.
- Include as many details as you can, MOST POSTS WILL GET ONLY ONE OR TWO ANSWERS.
- Post a follow up with a "Thank you" or "This worked!"
- When you learn something, use that knowledge to HELP ANOTHER USER LATER.
Before posting, please read https://www.cgsecurity.org/testdisk.pdf
Locked
Message
Author
Couch
Posts: 2
Joined: 04 Apr 2021, 06:44

Cannot find certain folders (My Documents) in Partition Recovery

#1 Post by Couch »

Hi,

First of all, thanks for your time.

I managed to run my hard-drive through testdisk and was able to run a "quick-search" to finally see my primary partition. After pressing P on the partition, I was able to see a run-down of the basic folders in the partition, including "$Recycle.Bin, Program Files, Program Files(x86), Program Data, Users etc.

However. I'm trying to find a specific folder, My Documents, that was under Users under "User(my name)". My user folder is visible under "Users" but the typical "My Documents", "Downloads", "Desktop", cannot be seen, for some reason.

I've never formatted this harddrive, and its apparent that some old files are still here, since I can see some old recordings I did of some games under the "Fraps" folder, which is visible in this partition.

Any recommendations/advice? I really just want some documents/files that were saved under "My Documents" in this old hard-drive.

Thanks for your time and response!

recuperation
Posts: 2718
Joined: 04 Jan 2019, 09:48
Location: Hannover, Deutschland (Germany, Allemagne)

Re: Cannot find certain folders (My Documents) in Partition Recovery

#2 Post by recuperation »

If the partition you discovered contains valid content as you checked, you could write the partition table setting the partition to "primary" before.
You could then search your partition again using the tools of your operating system.

Couch
Posts: 2
Joined: 04 Apr 2021, 06:44

Re: Cannot find certain folders (My Documents) in Partition Recovery

#3 Post by Couch »

recuperation wrote: 04 Apr 2021, 09:28 If the partition you discovered contains valid content as you checked, you could write the partition table setting the partition to "primary" before.
You could then search your partition again using the tools of your operating system.
Hey Recupiration, thanks for the reply. When doing a "quick search" and finding that partition that included the valid content, I did "write" it over the primary structure and proceeded to reboot. This led to three different "external" hard-drives being recognized by Windows, but were still unopenable, including the primary partition that I wrote over the hard-drive. Am I doing this right (or should I say, "write" haha)?

Just for clarification, here's what I did. I did a "quick search" for partitions of the hard-drive, found three valid partitions. One partition was classified as a primary bootable, the one with the valid content (that's missing some files/folders such as "My Documents") was classified as a primary, and the third partition, which has some files I'm guessing that relate to Windows upgrade (from 7 to 10), is classified as a primary. The partition with the valid content was the one I pressed "enter" on, and I proceeded to write it over the partition structure of the disk. After rebooting, it led to the above - three separate recognized, but unable to open (Windows gives the error of "/E: is not accessible, the parameter is incorrect") hard-drives.

Side-note, testdisk recognizes my hard-drive as two different medias, one being "Disk /dev/sdb" and the other being "Disk \\.\PhysicalDrive1". I did the above using the latter, "Disk \\.\PhysicalDrive1" based off a tutorial. Should I have used the /dev/sdb media instead?

I look forward to your response, and as always, thanks for your time and advice.

recuperation
Posts: 2718
Joined: 04 Jan 2019, 09:48
Location: Hannover, Deutschland (Germany, Allemagne)

Re: Cannot find certain folders (My Documents) in Partition Recovery

#4 Post by recuperation »

Couch wrote: 04 Apr 2021, 22:49
recuperation wrote: 04 Apr 2021, 09:28 If the partition you discovered contains valid content as you checked, you could write the partition table setting the partition to "primary" before.
You could then search your partition again using the tools of your operating system.
Hey Recupiration, thanks for the reply. When doing a "quick search" and finding that partition that included the valid content, I did "write" it over the primary structure and proceeded to reboot. This led to three different "external" hard-drives being recognized by Windows, but were still unopenable, including the primary partition that I wrote over the hard-drive. Am I doing this right (or should I say, "write" haha)?
I don't know. Rewriting the partition table does not multiply the number of physical drives. Please post a picture of your Disk management in windows and your Testdisk log file!

Just for clarification, here's what I did. I did a "quick search" for partitions of the hard-drive, found three valid partitions. One partition was classified as a primary bootable, the one with the valid content (that's missing some files/folders such as "My Documents") was classified as a primary, and the third partition, which has some files I'm guessing that relate to Windows upgrade (from 7 to 10), is classified as a primary. The partition with the valid content was the one I pressed "enter" on, and I proceeded to write it over the partition structure of the disk. After rebooting, it led to the above - three separate recognized, but unable to open (Windows gives the error of "/E: is not accessible, the parameter is incorrect") hard-drives.
You might run chkdsk to repair the partition:
"Run "cmd" (right click "Run as Administrator" and type "chkdsk /f d:" (replace d: by the correct drive letter)"

As you don't have a backup of that partition I would first copy the content of that partition to another healthy location using Testdisk.
Side-note, testdisk recognizes my hard-drive as two different medias, one being "Disk /dev/sdb" and the other being "Disk \\.\PhysicalDrive1". I did the above using the latter, "Disk \\.\PhysicalDrive1" based off a tutorial. Should I have used the /dev/sdb media instead?
I don't know.

Locked