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Hi,

I'm trying to recover the data of my Girlfriends laptop HDD and I hope you can help me with that.
What has happened:
The laptop wasn't shut down properly, so at next boot the Windows repair screen appeared (Win8). I tried every option to repair the hdd, but I didnt work. I just got back the message that I have to look in the SrtTrail.txt . I decided to remove the HDD from the laptop and plug it in my pc via external usb case, to at least safe the data. The problem is, the disk isn't recognized properly. Instead of the ~120 GB, there is only one partition von the disk with ~300 MB. At least, in that partition I found a folder "Temp" with the srtTrail.txt. Its written that there was a failure during the repair of the partition table. So i tried testdisk to repair the partition of the disk, without success. Analysing the disk showed me 4 drives, the last 2 ones seem to be the ones I'm looking for. But now im not sure what to do. When I press "p" for list files of these partitions, it says that he isnt able to open it because the filesystems seems to be damaged. Do I have to choose a partition type for each of these partitions (p,*,l)? I tried this, but I got the message: "wirte error". When I try a deeper search, all partitions disappear. The same happens if I restart the analyse, until I unplug it, and plug it in again.
I hope anybody can help me with that problem.
Thanks a lot!
Greets

Beejail

Is there nobody who can help me with that problem? Or do you need additional information?

Well first thing you need to know is what was the original partional layout? How many partitions?

Another important detail is if this was in a laptop, what manufacturer, and was it ever reformatted? Or it is the way it came from said manufacturer.

Reasons I ask are. Windows 8 normally will format a drive with just 2 partitions. A hidden system partition that is usually a 100-300MB in size, and the data partition. A brand name laptop could have additional partitions. A tools partitions, and a recovery partition that could restore the hard drive back the way it was when you first opened the box.

Without know more about your systems it's hard for anyone to help you. At least me. But i'm only a noobie to this stuff.

Your disk is described as a physically disk only.
Did you use TestDisk 64 Bit?
It's recommended to use testdisk 32bit.
Maybe your disk is recognized properly.
Because your disk in the upper area of the testdisk screen lists your disk size with 120 GB.
But it's possible that your partition is wrong?
Would it be possible to repeat your diagnose?
I'd need a screen from Analyse, the result of Quick and Deeper Search.
If TestDisk found any partitions, please check them and press p to have a try to list your files.
Pressing q for quit, you'll get back to the previous screen.
Also in your testdisk-folder, testdisk creates a testdisk.log file.
You can open it using a word processor like wordpad and copy and paste the content here in your post also.

Fiona