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Please Help Me Rebuild/Recover Partition or Recover Data?

Posted: 29 Apr 2014, 16:17
by ostrichsak
I started another thread here but I think my lack of screen shots or info to start it off kept a lot of people from being able to offer advice. I want to start a fresh thread from the beginning with info and screen shots and hopefully you guys can help me resolve this issue in a timely manner as my HTPC has been crippled for weeks now.

I'm running Win7 64-bit & use WMC to serve up live TV as well as DVR programs & downloaded videos & movies. This setup has been running fine for years with a couple of upgrades (larger) to my secondary drive that houses all this data. Within the last couple of months I installed a WD Red 3TB after scanning it and have been going on with my usual activities w/o any issue. Last night I rebooted after a MS pop-up asked me to in order to complete recent updates. After rebooting I noticed that my secondary storage drive (E:) was no longer listed on my capacity widget on the desktop. I opened My Computer and was surprised to see it listed as a new volume with the drive letter E: still but it won't let me do anything other than format at this time. I downloaded and ran TestDisk for the first time and have a few screen grabs & was hoping someone here who knows more about this sort of thing can help me out. It seems as though the partition might have become corrupt and therefore all my data isn't seen by the OS. Can someone look at these screen captures & help me sort this out? Hopefully someone can tell me which step to take next in an attempt to recover/repair the corrupt partition if that's possible at this point.

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This is where it sits now so if someone can tell me what to do next and why that would be swell.

Thanks for the help!

Anyone wishing to refer to the original thread can find it here: http://forum.cgsecurity.org/phpBB3/plea ... t3672.html

Re: Please Help Me Rebuild/Recover Partition or Recover Data

Posted: 02 May 2014, 09:31
by cgrenier
After Deeper Search, select "WD Red 3TB", press 'p'. If you can see your files, set this partition as P(rimary).
On next screen, choose Write, confirm, Quit and reboot

Re: Please Help Me Rebuild/Recover Partition or Recover Data

Posted: 02 May 2014, 13:45
by ostrichsak
cgrenier wrote:After Deeper Search, select "WD Red 3TB", press 'p'. If you can see your files, set this partition as P(rimary).
On next screen, choose Write, confirm, Quit and reboot
Damn. Unfortunately due to memory leak I had to reboot the PC. I waited for days & unfortunately had no choice but to finally reboot it yesterday as it's the PC that handles all of our TV/DVR duties. So, from the beginning, is there a way I can get to this spot again to enter the sequence you specified or am I going to have to do the 5 day scan once again? Please tell me it's not that one.That's why I even started a 2nd thread because I was really hoping to get some input before I had to reboot. My machine starts running slow when the memory reaches 60% and it was over 90% so I had no choice unfortunately.

Re: Please Help Me Rebuild/Recover Partition or Recover Data

Posted: 03 May 2014, 09:53
by cgrenier
Run TestDisk, Analyse, Quick Search, choose Stop, use 'a' to manually add the partition "WD 3TB Red", the starting and ending sectors need to match the values from the screenshot, set this partition type as MS Data/NTFS. Set the partition as P(rimary), On next screen, choose Write, confirm. Go in Advanced, select this partition, Boot, BackupBS, confirm, Quit and reboot.

Re: Please Help Me Rebuild/Recover Partition or Recover Data

Posted: 03 May 2014, 21:04
by ostrichsak
cgrenier wrote:Run TestDisk, Analyse, Quick Search, choose Stop, use 'a' to manually add the partition "WD 3TB Red", the starting and ending sectors need to match the values from the screenshot, set this partition type as MS Data/NTFS. Set the partition as P(rimary), On next screen, choose Write, confirm. Go in Advanced, select this partition, Boot, BackupBS, confirm, Quit and reboot.
Thanks for your post. When I get home and have enough down-time to do these I will follow your instruction & post the results.

Re: Please Help Me Rebuild/Recover Partition or Recover Data

Posted: 03 May 2014, 21:06
by ostrichsak
By the way, based on the results so far what are your thoughts? Is this something that will likely be fixable or rebuildable, are we on a data saving quest or do you think I will be able to correct this and put it back into action as-is? Just curious what these results pictures are telling you so far so I can get a better idea what it all means and depend on help a little less next time I use this program.

Re: Please Help Me Rebuild/Recover Partition or Recover Data

Posted: 07 May 2014, 07:25
by cgrenier
The partition table and your NTFS boot sector have been overwritten. TestDisk has been able to find your lost partition, so it can fix the partition table and the NTFS boot sector using its backup.

Re: Please Help Me Rebuild/Recover Partition or Recover Data

Posted: 07 May 2014, 14:56
by ostrichsak
cgrenier wrote:The partition table and your NTFS boot sector have been overwritten. TestDisk has been able to find your lost partition, so it can fix the partition table and the NTFS boot sector using its backup.
That's what I like to hear! I got super busy and in fact my mom's primary PC has some critical issues so before I can get back to my situation I have to install Windows Vista on a new SSD I got her and get that up and running so she's able to easily use it w/o any more issue and then I can shift focus back to my storage drive situation. In addition to my new storage drive setup (two 3TB HDD's) I also got a SSD for my primary I need to install the OS on and get going so I'm excited to get all this up and running when I get time because it'll be like a new machine and the concern of future storage drive failures isn't as big if I have an instant back-up available. Thanks again for your help and as soon as I get a chance I'll do what you said to do a couple of posts ago and report back. Is there anything I should know so when it finishes I can proceed? Like if it says this do this or if it says that do that? I just don't want a repeat of last time where I'm ready for the next step & I don't know how to proceed when it's something simple. If that's the end or it's not something simple I'll just proceed and post back.

Re: Please Help Me Rebuild/Recover Partition or Recover Data

Posted: 10 May 2014, 18:52
by ostrichsak
Alright, finally got some time that coincides with when I can have the network down to work on these drives.

I started again but am not sure completely what to do so I mostly did the default stuff & from what I remember doing the first time. Here's screen shots of what I'm doing:

I did 'Create' and then this is the following screen:
1.jpg
1.jpg (76.86 KiB) Viewed 5497 times
^From there I selected the third option which is 'Physical Drive 2 - 3000 GB'

Then on the next screen:
2.jpg
2.jpg (71.94 KiB) Viewed 5497 times
^Here I left it on EFI/GPT and proceeded.

On the next screen I got the options you mentioned in you told me to do in your post earlier 'Run....' which I followed your instructions (Analyse, Quick Search, Stop, A to add partition) and then this is the next screen came up and you said that the starting and ending values need to match the values of the screen shot:
3.jpg
3.jpg (45.17 KiB) Viewed 5497 times
^Now the two values match each other but they don't match the previous screen shot I posted. I just want to make sure I'm doing everything right before I proceed. What should I do next?

Re: Please Help Me Rebuild/Recover Partition or Recover Data

Posted: 16 May 2014, 05:36
by ostrichsak
Did you forget about me? :(