Gifted with LaCie Ext HD

How to use TestDisk to recover lost partition
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chuckster
Posts: 4
Joined: 19 Oct 2013, 04:45

Gifted with LaCie Ext HD

#1 Post by chuckster »

Hello Forum -

My wife the hairdresser got what my Device Manager calls a LaCie d2 Quadra v3 USB Device (used) for free from one of her clients. It's a silver upright tower ext HD with one big blue pushbutton/blue light indicator on the front. The LaCie website did not recognize the serial no., and I am assuming it is a 1TB drive. Her winXP laptop wouldn't mount it so I tried it on my winXP desktop and got the same result. I have unplugged my regular backup drive so that the LaCie is the only ext HD on my system. I searched the forums, and tried a utility to clean up and remove old USB Mass Storage Drivers. It deleted a lot of stuff but it didn't magically solve the problem. I then found TestDisk and the basic tutorial, and answered all questions as shown, and got the following screens at the 68% and "finished" points. This unit is a complete black box to me and there is no data on it I want to save. A complete erasure is fine as long as utility in an winXP environment can be established. But if it won't mount, I can't do anything with it. Previous owner may have been running a Mac, though I ran this test set for Intel (PC) Any advice ?
testdisk results 68%_clipped.JPG
testdisk results 68%_clipped.JPG (26.95 KiB) Viewed 2569 times
testdisk results final_clipped.JPG
testdisk results final_clipped.JPG (44.23 KiB) Viewed 2569 times

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

Re: Gifted with LaCie Ext HD

#2 Post by Fiona »

I'd need info about testdisk Analyse too.
Because it's your current partition table/structur.
Then, I'd be able to judge your situation.
Also, you can copy and paste the content of your testdisk.log.
It would additional provide some info about the results in testdisk.
Until yet, I only have a screen during the scan and a message of not recoverable partitions, because they end after disk limit.

Fiona

chuckster
Posts: 4
Joined: 19 Oct 2013, 04:45

Re: Gifted with LaCie Ext HD

#3 Post by chuckster »

Hello Fiona ! :mrgreen:

Here are the screens from my second run of TestDisk. This time, I noticed the system was telling me that it had detected an EFI GPT partition type, so I used that instead of the Intel setting, then ran the Analyse. The Intel run
had taken about two hours, but this time it was done in two minutes, most of which was spent on the last 5%.
I see the word "Mac" in there. Can an external HD previously connected to Mac OS be converted to winXP?

TestDisk2_EFI GPT detected.JPG
TestDisk2_EFI GPT detected.JPG (47.19 KiB) Viewed 2560 times
TestDisk2_analyse.JPG
TestDisk2_analyse.JPG (39.09 KiB) Viewed 2560 times
TestDisk2_analyse_finished.JPG
TestDisk2_analyse_finished.JPG (45.54 KiB) Viewed 2560 times

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

Re: Gifted with LaCie Ext HD

#4 Post by Fiona »

Now it looks like, that your disk and partition table is recognized correctly.
But it displays an Apple partition which WinXP can't mount because it's not supported.
Do you know what kind of partition did you previously have?
Has it been an FAT, NTFS or HFS+ partitoion?

Fiona

chuckster
Posts: 4
Joined: 19 Oct 2013, 04:45

Re: Gifted with LaCie Ext HD

#5 Post by chuckster »

Fiona -

I think there is a high probability this LaCie HD was previously owned by an Apple user, and was an Apple
HD all it's previous life.

chuckster
Posts: 4
Joined: 19 Oct 2013, 04:45

Re: Gifted with LaCie Ext HD

#6 Post by chuckster »

Fiona - :? :oops:

My wife and I are separated, so communications are sporadic, and she isn't as computer savvy as I am, which isn't saying much. She now tells me she got both this hard drive AND a laptop running Apple OS as gifts from her client.
She was trying to say 'sayonara' to the contents of her HP laptop running XP by transferring them directly to this LaCie ext HD, and giving the job to my son, who is less computer savvy then either of us. She WANTS it to stay formatted
for Apple, and I am going to put her old HP's pictures and docs on a big thumb drive for her, and just hand her back this LaCie unchanged.

Thanks for standing by while I got myself figured out here ! It looks like TestDisk verified the obvious, and it was up to me know what I was doing !

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