Boot disk all partitions delete, Acer Aspire 1 Happy

How to use TestDisk to recover lost partition
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Dannman
Posts: 3
Joined: 26 Jan 2013, 15:33

Boot disk all partitions delete, Acer Aspire 1 Happy

#1 Post by Dannman »

Hi all
New this forum, Test Disk and recovering partitions (I did file recovery a couple of times years ago).
Machine: Acer Aspire 1 Happy netbook. 250Gb HDD, Atom 1.66 GHz, 1GB RAM, Windows Starter 7 and Android (it's supposed to come with both, aparently).

Someone deleted all the partitions, and created one big partition (size of the disk) format FAT 32 on the internal hard drive, using Gparted running a live Linux Mint 9. This include the OS and recovery partition. (It was supposed to be the external one he was doing.) The new partition has since been deleted. Nothing else has been done with the hard drive since other than a couple of scans, one with Active recovery, which found one small partition, and with Test Disk.

Here's a couple of screen shots.
Showing all partitions found during scan: http://www.bookstew.webs.com/post/testd ... nal-13.png
Error message about size of last partition: http://www.bookstew.webs.com/post/testd ... nal-14.png
Deep scan finished showing partitions: http://www.bookstew.webs.com/post/testd ... nal-15.png
The top one listed will be the 'new' one that isn't wanted. Initially Test disk marks this with a * in front.
Here's the log file created in this scan: http://www.bookstew.webs.com/post/testdisk/testdisk.log

When asked 'Should TestDisk search for partition created under Vista ?', if I say no then no partitions are found. If I say yes then I get the result as shown in the screen shots. They show exactly what I get with nothing changed or set by me.

I don't get the [Extd Part] option as shown in some of the examples. (Does this happen).

I've done nothing else yet. (Not taking enought care is what got us in this mess to start with).

From something on another forum the PQSERVICE partiton could be the Acer recovery one. Also mentioned was a Acer MBR, though a general MBR would get a machine going.

I don't know whitch to mark what (* P E L etc). PQSERVICE might need marking as hidden.
Who do I do now.
Thanks

Dannman
Posts: 3
Joined: 26 Jan 2013, 15:33

Re: Boot disk all partitions delete, Acer Aspire 1 Happy

#2 Post by Dannman »

That should have been What do I do now at the end. I was short on time.
Forgot about message saying I had hidden sectors: Image

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