Structure: Bad when trying to recover a logical NTFS
Posted: 07 May 2012, 04:45
I am having some difficulty using TestDisk to restore a logical partition which was deleted at the same time as I intentionally deleted a primary partition. I am very happy to see that my data still exists and seems to be recoverable, but I need some help.
After getting rid of the last PC I built, I kept the hard drive (a 1 TB SATA HDD) from it and have it currently connected in a less powerful desktop PC by HP. The hard drive had 15 GiB for a primary NTFS partition with Windows XP Professional installed on it (no volume label), and an extended partition which I never used fully: 40 GiB for another NTFS partition for programs (volume label "XP_Progs"), 100 GiB NTFS partition for data (volume label "XP_Data"), and perhaps 200 or 300 GiB left unused within that extended partition. A large portion was unallocated.
I can and still do boot up the copy of XP Professional, but I decided to start trying out BSD and Linux distros, recently. The 1 TB drive has more than enough room to do so. After installing Debian most recently, I noticed the unused space which was within the extended partition was gone, shrinking it to something only large enough for my logical partitions (XP_Progs and XP_Data). While using Windows XP Home (booted from the PC's original HDD) I made a FAT32 partition (volume label "stuff") on the 1 TiB drive which came directly after XP_Data. I realized later FAT32 was not going to be sufficient, and then used XP Home's disk management to delete "stuff." This act took out XP_Data along with it.
I downloaded TestDisk 6.14-WIP late last night and have been attempting to recreate that partition, but I cannot resolve the "Structure: Bad" and "Invalid partition structure" messages. For whatever reason, after I finish a quick scan or deeper scan, TestDisk sets the primary NTFS partition with XP Professional installed upon it as well as XP_Progs to "deleted." If I attempt to set "XP_Progs" back to a logical partition (or anything but deleted), that's when "Structure: Bad" appears, even though I cannot spot a conflict.
Granted, just because I can not see a conflict in starting and ending locations of partitions does not mean that one is not there. Maybe I need the extended partition back. Maybe there's some trick with starting and ending locations. Whatever the case, I appreciate any help I can get, here.
A few other details which may be worth noting. First, I do receive warnings that TestDisk thinks I should have a different drive geometry with 255 heads, but I know what the real capacity of this HDD is, and it does not exceed 1 TB, much less 2 TiB, as the program's suggestion claimed in one of my deeper scans. If I understand correctly, my most recent partition for Debian is triggering that message. Second, I have attempted to "Read The Manual" before posting here, but I can find no such manual on the documentation wiki; the closest thing was the step-by-step.
Here is a copy of my most recent TestDisk log of a quick scan.
After getting rid of the last PC I built, I kept the hard drive (a 1 TB SATA HDD) from it and have it currently connected in a less powerful desktop PC by HP. The hard drive had 15 GiB for a primary NTFS partition with Windows XP Professional installed on it (no volume label), and an extended partition which I never used fully: 40 GiB for another NTFS partition for programs (volume label "XP_Progs"), 100 GiB NTFS partition for data (volume label "XP_Data"), and perhaps 200 or 300 GiB left unused within that extended partition. A large portion was unallocated.
I can and still do boot up the copy of XP Professional, but I decided to start trying out BSD and Linux distros, recently. The 1 TB drive has more than enough room to do so. After installing Debian most recently, I noticed the unused space which was within the extended partition was gone, shrinking it to something only large enough for my logical partitions (XP_Progs and XP_Data). While using Windows XP Home (booted from the PC's original HDD) I made a FAT32 partition (volume label "stuff") on the 1 TiB drive which came directly after XP_Data. I realized later FAT32 was not going to be sufficient, and then used XP Home's disk management to delete "stuff." This act took out XP_Data along with it.
I downloaded TestDisk 6.14-WIP late last night and have been attempting to recreate that partition, but I cannot resolve the "Structure: Bad" and "Invalid partition structure" messages. For whatever reason, after I finish a quick scan or deeper scan, TestDisk sets the primary NTFS partition with XP Professional installed upon it as well as XP_Progs to "deleted." If I attempt to set "XP_Progs" back to a logical partition (or anything but deleted), that's when "Structure: Bad" appears, even though I cannot spot a conflict.
Granted, just because I can not see a conflict in starting and ending locations of partitions does not mean that one is not there. Maybe I need the extended partition back. Maybe there's some trick with starting and ending locations. Whatever the case, I appreciate any help I can get, here.
A few other details which may be worth noting. First, I do receive warnings that TestDisk thinks I should have a different drive geometry with 255 heads, but I know what the real capacity of this HDD is, and it does not exceed 1 TB, much less 2 TiB, as the program's suggestion claimed in one of my deeper scans. If I understand correctly, my most recent partition for Debian is triggering that message. Second, I have attempted to "Read The Manual" before posting here, but I can find no such manual on the documentation wiki; the closest thing was the step-by-step.
Here is a copy of my most recent TestDisk log of a quick scan.