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Way too slow to recover a missing GPT partition???

Posted: 05 Jan 2016, 14:01
by cokie69
Am I doing something wrong???

I had a 3Tb almost full and perfectly working GPT NTFS Windows 7 formatted hard disk in an external SATA enclosure. I decided to change the letter of the unit and suddenly the partition appears RAW. In case it matters, the BIOS is not EFI (as per the choice in TestDisk menu)

I'm running TestDisk to recover the partition... choose the partition type as EFI GPT and then Analyze.... and it starts the procedure: 364000 sectors to go, 1 sector per second (give or take)... that's 67 HOURS!!!! Is this normal?

Excuse my naivity but I though that, providing the disk is not damaged (which it doesn't look that's the case as per the above explanation on how it came to be RAW), it'd be a matter of looking at the master boot record (or whatever name it has in GPT) and/or its backup --in the past MBRs had an automatic backup made at the end of the disk, didn't they?-- and once found, at least the backup, it'd show that a previous partition existed and offered to rewrite the MBR... that's a few minutes tops, isn't it? How come it's analyzing the 364000 sectors???

Thanks

Re: Way too slow to recover a missing GPT partition???

Posted: 05 Jan 2016, 18:54
by cgrenier
If the partition is listed as raw, no need to search for a lost partition.
Run TestDisk, select the physicaldisk, EFI GPT, Advanced, select the partition, Boot,
If available, choose BackupBS and confirm
Otherwise, choose RebuildBS, List. If you can see your files, choose Write and confirm.
Quit and restart your computer.

Re: Way too slow to recover a missing GPT partition???

Posted: 08 Jan 2016, 18:08
by cokie69
As I suspected... a five minute procedure... MERCI cgrenier, you saved me wasting hours of tediously searching partitions... :mrgreen: :mrgreen: