A friend of mine told me his "D" partition shows up as "RAW" in Windows after his attempt to reinstall it. Here is what it looks like:
So I stumbled upon TestDisk which seems to have the fix for that. The problem is that when I try to RebuildBS, nothing whatsover happens once the 40 min scan for MFT is finished. I get no error messages or anything. It goes "Search mft 456______/457156608", then it gets me back to the previous screen:
Is this a bug? If not, why is it (not) working like this?
RebuildBS does nothing on a zeroed out NTFS boot sector
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When asking for technical support:
- Search for posts on the same topic before posting a new question.
- Give clear, specific information in the title of your post.
- Include as many details as you can, MOST POSTS WILL GET ONLY ONE OR TWO ANSWERS.
- Post a follow up with a "Thank you" or "This worked!"
- When you learn something, use that knowledge to HELP ANOTHER USER LATER.
Before posting, please read https://www.cgsecurity.org/testdisk.pdf
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Re: RebuildBS does nothing on a zeroed out NTFS boot sector
Can you post the content of testdisk.log file ?
Re: RebuildBS does nothing on a zeroed out NTFS boot sector
Ok, the boot sector was never written in the first place and the zero-filled hole is just a placeholder created at some point during Windows installation. I've managed to get the partition back by first removing all partitions in Disk management and then performing [Analyze] in TestDisk and setting all four entries to Physical. The partition contained an incomplete Windows setup that was aborted at the file copying step. So I called my friend and he confirmed that indeed there were three attempts to install the OS. I guess he wanted to at least get me trying by not telling the full story first -_-
Still, my suggestion is to make TestDisk a little more clear about MFT search results.
Still, my suggestion is to make TestDisk a little more clear about MFT search results.