cgsecurity.org

Just a newbie here. Been building and repairing computers for 20 years, but haven't taken the time to understand *exactly* how my HDDs worked all this time! But now I have a drive that my computer can't read, and I'm not sure how to diagnose it before I go using this testdisk tool!

In a nutshell: My mobo's SATA controller started to fail over the course of a few weeks, so I finally shut down my computer, disconnected the four drives, and fixed the SATA problem. Now I have a new mobo (new computer, really) and as it is a SFF PC, I bought a USB3 HDD dock to manage extra hard drives. Of the four original drives, 3 out of 4 are readable. Of course, the one that Windows is saying "needs to be formatted" is the one with my most important files on it.

I started up testdisk, and did the basics:

1) Selected the media
2) Selected "Intel"
3) Selected "Analyse"
4) It found two identical partitions right off the bat:


5) Ran "Quick Search," and it found two partitions:


6) Hit "Continue" and suddenly it couldn't find ANY partitions:


7) Hit "enter" to continue, and it reinforced that it could no longer see the partitions it had just seen:


I'm running a "Deeper Search" now. Am I on the right track?

I'll add more pics as I progress: http://imgur.com/a/t2Z1b

8) Deeper scan completed, and it showed the same thing as after the Quick Search:


9) Hit "Continue" and was treated to one single partition, now colored green. Boy I wish I knew what was going on:


10) Finally, I've hit "P" to list files and was treated to this heart-sinking scenario:


And that's it. I'm not sure how to diagnose this, and I don't want to "write" anything lest I damage my drive further. Can anyone help? I'd post a log, but it never asked me if I wanted to create one.

Thanks!!!

I must have done something horribly wrong - the forum seems active, but I didn't receive any replies. I can't find a "how to post" post, so I'm not sure if I'm doing something incorrectly. Can anyone help either way?

In step 8) you are choosing the first partition and selecting "Continue", but it seems you didn't do that with the second partition as well