Not sure if TestDisk found my partition?

How to use TestDisk to recover lost partition
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Author
hoongster
Posts: 1
Joined: 22 Oct 2013, 18:24

Not sure if TestDisk found my partition?

#1 Post by hoongster »

Hello all,

This is regarding an external harddisk - Seagate Expansion 500gb portable hard disk.
The drive went RAW this morning. Windows asked "You must format the disk before using it"

I'm totally not good with computers and So I downloaded testdisk and just follow step by step without really understanding how it works behind the scenes.

In one of the first windows i remember that the testdisk said "NONE partition type" is found. However in the subsequent menu i chose "INTEL" (first option) instead of "NONE" because I am very sure that this drive is not "none" as it is as of yesterday still being used by a friend who alternates between Macbook and Windows PC. I just thought that this above piece of info is important before I proceed. Testdisk was able to detect the size of the 500gb disk correctly though.

1. Next, I used quick search as there were no readily detectable partitions.
Quick search finished with no partition found, it was slow in the first 15000 cylinders and hat all sort of read errors with fluctuating numbers.

2. Then, I used Deeper Search, and immediately something showed up below which showed sign of life. I am not sure if it is an actual partition has been found. Should I stop the search? It is still running over the night.

Image

What is the next step I should do in order to reverse the "You must format the disk before using it" error in windows?

Thank you.

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