cgsecurity.org

Hi all,

I pulled out the old hd from my old computer to use as an external HD. It had two usable (bitlocker encrypted) and one hidden recovery partition. I tried to create a factory reset disk in this recovery partition from my new laptop. It created the disk image fine but in the process, it got rid of two other partitions. They became unallocated space. I tried to give a letter to the drive without formatting but windows won't recognize it without formatting (now thinking about it, this is not surprising at all).

I tried to use some recovery tools but after 15 hours it didn't show any files. Another recovery program only showed gigabytes large video files which I had no file like that. I want to give TestDisk a try. Do you have any suggestions how to use it for recovering files? Any help is much appreciated because I have some really important scientific analysis files I need to access to.

Thanks for the help

Because your partitions were bitlocker encrypted, you won't be able to recover data without recovering your partitions first.
When using TestDisk, run Analyse, Quick Search, Stop, Deeper Search, set the partitions to recover to P(rimary), on next screen, choose Write, confirm, Quit.

I tried what you wrote but it took forever (3 days or so) and at the end I wasn't able to see the partitions to change to Primary. Any other suggestions?