help: number of bytes per sector mismatches

How to use TestDisk to recover lost partition
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piper36
Posts: 2
Joined: 01 Dec 2013, 16:22

help: number of bytes per sector mismatches

#1 Post by piper36 »

I need some help trying to restore a partition I deleted this morning by mistake when preparing to format a new drive. I ran disk management and for some reason it decided to ask me to re-assign a drive letter to one of my existing storage drives. I thought it was asking for the new empty drive but I realized too late that it turned my existing storage disk to unallocated. The drive was a Seagate 3TB "Backup Plus" drive that I pulled out of the enclosure last year to run in my own external storage bay. The drive was formatted as GPT when I set it up last year.

I downloaded and ran Testdisc on my Windows 7 32bit system. Here are the steps I ran - it tells me "number of bytes per sector mismatches" and "No partition found or selected for recovery".

1) I highlighted my drive with the deleted partitions and clicked "Proceed"
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2) EFI GPT was already highlighted by default so I hit enter.
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3) - I then selected "Analyse"
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4) - This is the next screen - "Quick Search" was selected by default so I hit enter
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5) - This screen appeared briefly:
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6) Then this screen appeared - "Continue" was highlighted by default so I hit enter
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7) I selected the second item, "NEW VOLUME", which is what my old partition was named, then hit enter
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8) Then it says "No Partiton found or selected for recovery"
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Any idea what's happening here? It seems like it expects to find a 6TB disk instead of a 3Tb one if I'm reading it right, according to screenshot 6. I can see the list of all my files on the drive if I select the partition and hit "P" to list all files. But for some reason it doesn't seem to want to let me recover the entire partition. What can I do?

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cgrenier
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Re: help: number of bytes per sector mismatches

#2 Post by cgrenier »

After Quick Search, use the arrow keys to switch the partition to P(rimary). On next screen, you should be able to select Write.

piper36
Posts: 2
Joined: 01 Dec 2013, 16:22

Re: help: number of bytes per sector mismatches

#3 Post by piper36 »

cgrenier wrote:After Quick Search, use the arrow keys to switch the partition to P(rimary). On next screen, you should be able to select Write.
Thank for the reply!

Ok, so I tried it again, and this time, at screenshot 7, I used the right arrow key to select "P" for Primary, then the "write" option became visible, so I selected "Write" and hit enter. This is the screen I get next:

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So what should I do next, and is this a good sign? Do I select "Rebuild BS", or "Repair MFT"? Or do I just select "Quit" and restart now? I'm leaving this as it is for now until I hear back so I don't do anything wrong from here. This was an external storage drive and I have a lot of newer files that I should have backed up but haven't yet.

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