cgsecurity.org

Hello,

I have a 1TB WD My Passport External Hard Disk with data on it that suddenly showed up as unformatted (No knocks, drops, or sudden USB ejections). Being new to TestDisk, I have tried running the Quick Search and it has only been 1% after 2 days. Is that normal, or do I have to do something differently when Read errors are present?

Thank You.

I'm new here as well and left my testdisk session running for 4 days. The 1% did not change but the sectors searched kept changing - in comparison to the total number of sectors - so I left it running. The confusing thing for me was that it eventually exceeded the total number of sectors... I expected testdisk to stop and generate a report.
So, I have no answers for you but you are not alone!

@ Draziert

Looks like that testdisk hangs due to read errors and bad sectors.
Can you check your disk using crystaldiskinfo?
http://crystalmark.info/download/index-e.html
Please use the portable version, because the installer (exe) contains the adware open candy.
If you've bad sectors and testdisk hangs, you can try to clone your disk.
Can you upload a screen running testdisk Analyse (current partition structure)?
There is no Quick Search required, but only Analyse.
Can you use testdisk 7.1WIP 32bit and select your disk instead of your drive?
If your partition would be still in your partition table, you can run a boot sector diagnose and have a try to list your files.
Info will follow.

@ VincenzoAI

Can you open your testdisk.log using a wordprocessor and copy and paste the content of your testdisk.log into your next post?

Fiona

Hi Fiona, here are the screens (still working on the Disk intead of Drive bit):

If you look at the upper area of your testdisk photo, you've chosen Drive J: again.
Disk looks like:

Disk /dev/sdc - 3000 GB / 2794 GiB - CHS 45600 255 63, sector size=4096

Fiona

This should be the disk this time!

Yes it is.
You already have a valid partition in your partition table
Can you run TestDisk / Advanced / Boot and upload another snapshot?
If the menu List is available, can you try to list your files?
Don't use the menu RepairMFT.
It's intended as a diagnose only and nothing shouldn't changed.

Fiona

The folders/files I had did not seem to appear using the "List" command.

I assume it's your 1 TB disk:
http://forum.cgsecurity.org/phpBB3/down ... hp?id=3194
It's only necessary to select your affected Disk.
Looks like that the backup of your boot sector is damaged.
Don't use OrgBS to avoid any modification.
Can you run RebuildBS and if it was succesful to use the menu List to have another try to list your files?

Fiona

Ran it twice, been stuck at the same number for a couple of hours each time. Will leave it running longer and see if there are any changes!