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Mismatches and no partition

Posted: 27 Feb 2012, 22:33
by JohnC
Yikes... I own a 1tb drive that I can no longer access. I wanted to turn my external into an internal drive and the PC reassigned a drive letter and wants me to format. Of course I said no and started looking at ways to access my data.

When using TestDisk I receive;
Warning: number of heads/cylinder mismatches 255 <FAT> !=16 <HD>
Warning: Bad ending head <CHS and LBA don't match> No Partition is bootable

On a quick search it says: The following partition can't be recovered
> FAT32 LBA 0 1 1 1938015 14 53 1953519992 {My Book}

I receive the same message when I use the deeper search. The next screen suggest A: add partition L: load backup (which I do not have) and Enter: to continue.

Should I add a partition or will that wipe my HDD? Like anyone else in this situation I am desperate for help to access my drive.

Thank you,
John

Re: Mismatches and no partition

Posted: 27 Feb 2012, 22:46
by Fiona
I'd need info, how your Disk is listed in TestDisk.

Fiona

Re: Mismatches and no partition

Posted: 27 Feb 2012, 23:27
by JohnC
I hope this is what you are looking for...

Disk /dev/sdf - 41 MB / 39 MiB - WD 10EADS External

Or...

Disk /dev/sdf - 41 MB / 39 MiB - CHS 5 255 63

Otherwise I see...

1 P FAT32 LBA 0 1 1 121600 254 63 1953520002 [My Book]

On a side note I did go into Geometry and change the heads to 255.

Re: Mismatches and no partition

Posted: 27 Feb 2012, 23:38
by Fiona
Please don't change anything, if you're not sure!

Your Disk looks to small!

Disk /dev/sdf - 41 MB / 39 MiB - WD 10EADS External
I think should be 1 TB?
Looks like that the size of your disk is wrong?
Please provide info about your hdd!
Also your Motherboard and OS.

Re: Mismatches and no partition

Posted: 27 Feb 2012, 23:43
by JohnC
The HDD is a Western Digital My Book Essential Edition 2.0 and you are correct it is a 1 TB.

My motherboard is a Gigabyte S-series GA- P35-DS4

and my OS is Windows 7 64 bit

Re: Mismatches and no partition

Posted: 28 Feb 2012, 00:03
by Fiona
I've got some Infos, that Gigabyte Motherboards saving a Backup of the BIOS at the end of the harddisk.
This wipes out the host protected area of your harddisk and can lead through such strange behaviour.

The first thing to do is, update your BIOS from your motherboard (if it's possible).
Check if your drive is recognized correctly.
If it didn't work, you need a firmware repairer like hdat2.
Hdat2 has an option called SetMAX.
This Option can repair your Logical Block Addressing, so that your Disk might be recognized correctly.
http://www.hdat2.com/

If your data are still not available, we will have diagnose with TestDisk.

Fiona

Re: Mismatches and no partition

Posted: 28 Feb 2012, 00:14
by JohnC
I updated the bios yesterday and that is what took me from 32 mb to 31 mb if I recall correctly. Am I correct in assuming that the new bios affected my 1 TB drive and bypassed my internal HDD?

I also checked again for updates to the bios and ran again this morning.

Re: Mismatches and no partition

Posted: 28 Feb 2012, 00:51
by Fiona
Am I correct in assuming that the new bios affected my 1 TB drive and bypassed my internal HDD?
I've no idea, but it looks like?

As far as I know, Gigabyte fixed this through a Motherboard-Update.
So it happend mostly to older BIOS.
In cases when harddrives were affected it was often necessary, to set LBA back to max.
In some cases a tool called capacity restore tool helped;
http://hddguru.com/software/2007.07.20- ... tore-Tool/
But only in rare cases.
Hdat2 was more reliable.

But be aware that you are going to touch your firmware from your harddrive.
Please be careful!

Fiona

Re: Mismatches and no partition

Posted: 28 Feb 2012, 01:03
by JohnC
I am currently playing with Hdat2 as you suggested, well, more like stumbling around with it. I created a boot disk off of the ISO file and my first attempt did not go well as I had to repair windows that boots off of my internal drive. I am going to reboot again in about 45 minutes or so and see what I can figure out from there.

Re: Mismatches and no partition

Posted: 28 Feb 2012, 01:09
by Fiona
It might be a good advice, to disconnect all other harddrives.