Recover data from 500 GB Internal Sata HDD

How to use TestDisk to recover lost partition
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Author
Mario
Posts: 11
Joined: 05 Feb 2013, 11:54

Recover data from 500 GB Internal Sata HDD

#1 Post by Mario »

Hi,

The story is like this.
I have a 500 GB WD Blue Sata Internal HDD which has 4 partitions (drives), with Windows Server 2008 R2 Data Center edition as the OS. Its just 2 years old and is still under one more year of warranty.
Past few months, I noticed that in Disk Management, the partitions would not show "Healthy" (I forgot what it showed) - I had to right click on the drive and select "Reactivate" to get back the "Healthy" status.
When I first saw this, I did a "chkdsk" on all the partitions of this drive and found a couple of bad sectors but nothing much of anything else.

I keep my system running 24x7, but needed to restart my system a few times and faced no issues in the same. Once my work was done, I had to restart one last time but this time, instead of restart, I accidentally selected Shutdown and after the PC shutdown, it wont come back up. Every time, I started it, there would be a weird noise from the HDD and the post would just hang with this "clicking" noise from the hard disk.

Googling told me, its most probably a stuck head, so I took the drive out, unscrewed it and sure enough the head could not more back to its resting position. So, very gently, I pushed the head into its rest position and put the drive back in the PC - it started up and the clicking noise was gone (I could hear that it was revolving smoothly).

BUT - post now started detecting my HDD as IDE although the BIOS setting was set to AHCI and of course, the OS wont boot. Every time I would get, "A read error occurred..Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart."

No matter what settings I changed in the BIOS, (AHCI - IDE or IDE - AHCI, etc.), it would always throw the same error.

So, I took the drive out, put it in a SATA enclosure, set "Removable Disk" as the first boot device in the BIOS and connected it to my PC, and this time I got a new error - "BootMGR image is corrupt. The system cannot boot".

I should also mention here that I did try putting in the original OS CD to try a repair but it does not "see" the OS installation in my C drive.

So, after the "BOOTMGR corrupt" message, I took the drive out again and connected it with a laptop with Windows 7 Ultimate in it. Windows 7 Disk Management said the drive is invalid and dynamic and further googling told me that Windows 7 does not properly read "Dynamic" disks???

Anyway, so I ran testdisk and straightaway, it "saw" 4 partitions, all dynamic, all primary - the sizes of the sectors, however, seems to indicate, the first one is the boot sector (512 bytes), the next 100 MB is the boot partition that Win Server 08 creates, the next one is the C drive and the fourth one is the rest of my drives (D: E: and G:).

I have attached a log file (testdisk1.txt) for this.

Ok, so I clicked on "Quick Search" while selecting the 3rd of the list (which seemed to me to be the C drive) and it kind of showed nothing for the next 3~4 hours, I think (might have been shorter or longer).

But, TestDisk was able to read my partitions and I am pretty sure, that, at that point, it would have recovered all my data as well.

But I was impatient then and since it did not respond even after a long time (although note that TestDisk had not "hung"), I exited TestDisk and applied what I thought was quick fix.

Google told me that Windows 7 can read dynamic disks if they are converted to basic disks without data loss. So, I installed HxD and changed the 1C0 x 02, 1D0 x02, 1E0 x 02 and 1F0 x 02 bytes of my WD HDD into 42 from 07 (or maybe the other way round, cannot remember now).

That was it. Since then, whenever I connect this drive to my laptop, Test Disk just says - "Please wait".
HxD would hang if I tried to open this disk with HxD. Windows My Computer shows 4 extra drive icons (as if it recognizes that there are 4 partitions on the drive) but it won't read any of them and sometimes even offers to format one of the partitions, depending on its mood.
Disk Management just says "Connecting to Virtual Disk Service" or something similar for a long long time.

So, this is the situation. Please help me recover this.

Mario
Posts: 11
Joined: 05 Feb 2013, 11:54

Re: Recover data from 500 GB Internal Sata HDD

#2 Post by Mario »

Someone reply please

Mario
Posts: 11
Joined: 05 Feb 2013, 11:54

Re: Recover data from 500 GB Internal Sata HDD

#3 Post by Mario »

Fiona? Someone? Anyone?

Mario
Posts: 11
Joined: 05 Feb 2013, 11:54

Re: Recover data from 500 GB Internal Sata HDD

#4 Post by Mario »

Someone give me a reply please!

User avatar
Fiona
Posts: 2835
Joined: 18 Feb 2012, 17:19
Location: Ludwigsburg/Stuttgart - Germany

Re: Recover data from 500 GB Internal Sata HDD

#5 Post by Fiona »

Did TestDisk hang?
Might be possible if you have bad sectors.
Did you use dynamically partitions or just basic (Intel-MBR)?
Would it be possible to upload a screen from TestDisk / Analyse (it's your current partition structur - partition table).
Some Infos how your disk is listed in your disk management console are appreciated also.

Fiona

Mario
Posts: 11
Joined: 05 Feb 2013, 11:54

Re: Recover data from 500 GB Internal Sata HDD

#6 Post by Mario »

Hi Fiona,

Just finding out that you have replied has brought me a ton of relief.

Like I have posted in the first post, after I edited the 1C0x2, 1D0x2, 1E0x2 and 1F0x2 bytes of the crashed drive with HxD, (changed 42 to 07), TestDisk just says "Please wait" when I connect the crashed drive (externally via a Sata enclosure) and start TestDisk.
It stays this way for about 36 hours (the longest I have waited for it).
HxD just hangs now.

Before I edited with HxD, TestDisk recognized the crashed drive, found all partitions and said all of them are primary dynamic intel type (which is about right). I am pretty sure it would have recovered the data as well had I used that option but I was impatient and did the HxD edit to convert dynamic to basic without data loss (and now I am paying dearly for it).

My crashed drive may have a few bad sectors. But very few.

I am attaching a testdisk log when TestDisk used to recognize the drive (before HxD edit).

Disk Management used to say invalid dynamic drive initially but after the HxD edit, it just hangs.
Attachments
testdisk.zip
TestDisk log
(1.06 KiB) Downloaded 324 times

Mario
Posts: 11
Joined: 05 Feb 2013, 11:54

Re: Recover data from 500 GB Internal Sata HDD

#7 Post by Mario »

Hi Fiona,
Did you see the logfile? Is there hope for my HDD yet?

Mario
Posts: 11
Joined: 05 Feb 2013, 11:54

Re: Recover data from 500 GB Internal Sata HDD

#8 Post by Mario »

Hi...any help for me?

Mario
Posts: 11
Joined: 05 Feb 2013, 11:54

Re: Recover data from 500 GB Internal Sata HDD

#9 Post by Mario »

Hi Fiona,
Any update for me?

Mario
Posts: 11
Joined: 05 Feb 2013, 11:54

Re: Recover data from 500 GB Internal Sata HDD

#10 Post by Mario »

Someone reply please!!

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