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How to recover partition(s) if sizes don't match?

Posted: 29 Apr 2016, 21:38
by terribled
I've had a disk failure on a 1.5G Windows 7 drive. I used ddrescue to recover all but 181K to a 5T drive (not to an image, but directly to the device.) I then used ddrescue again to copy from that device to a new 3T internal drive, but ctrl-C'd out when about 2.8G had been copied, since the original drive was only 1.5G. (Probably not a genius move.) The partition information is corrupted, either due to the original drive failure, or my clueless attempts at recovery. There were 3 partitions, a Dell Utility partition, a recovery partition, and the main partition with the files I need. They are listed when I look at either the recovered drive or the new drive with Ubuntu Rescue Remix 12.04, but I haven't gotten anywhere with fsck or chkdsk.

I am now using TestDisk to try to recover the partitions on the new drive, but Quick Search said it couldn't recover any partitions because the size it scanned on the new drive (3T) did not match the size of the recovery drive (5T). Deeper Search is running now but I assume it will fail the same way.

Is there anything I can do to fix this and recover the partition(s)? TestDisk doesn't seem to have any params that sound helpful, so I'm not sure what to do next. Should I just give it up and use PhotoRec to recover the files? Or should I try using ddrescue to recover the failed drive a second time, this time to an image file?

Thanks for any help!

Re: How to recover partition(s) if sizes don't match?

Posted: 30 Apr 2016, 11:42
by cgrenier
Can you post the testdisk.log file ?

Re: How to recover partition(s) if sizes don't match?

Posted: 30 Apr 2016, 16:56
by terribled
Here's the log.

Re: How to recover partition(s) if sizes don't match?

Posted: 03 May 2016, 06:33
by citanul
I've got a very similar problem with Testdisk 7.0.

I accidentally deleted the single NTFS partition on my backup 2TB Seagate Expansion disk from Windows -> Computer/Disk Management -> Delete partition.

Quick Search finds an NTFS partition really quick but, when I attempt to restore it, testdisk says it can't do it because the partition size is larger than the disk.

TestDisk 7.0, Data Recovery Utility, April 2015
Christophe GRENIER <grenier@cgsecurity.org>
http://www.cgsecurity.org

Disk /dev/rdisk3 - 2000 GB / 1863 GiB - 3907029167 sectors
Analyse sector 2052227072/3907029166: 00%


Invalid NTFS or EXFAT boot
0 D HPFS - NTFS 807457642 4775859018 3968401377
HPFS - NTFS 807457642 4775859018 3968401377
Invalid FAT boot sector
0 D FAT16 >32M 1243036672 1672279907 429243236
FAT16 >32M 1243036672 1672279907 429243236

Find testdisk.log attached.

FWIW, before running Testdisk, I did a test run of www.easeus.com which apparently managed to find all the right files in the right structure, but didn't write anything.

Re: How to recover partition(s) if sizes don't match?

Posted: 04 May 2016, 06:18
by cgrenier
Run TestDisk, Advanced, select the partition, force the type to NTFS (7), Boot, RebuildBS, List.
If you can see your files, choose Write, confirm, Quit and restart your computer.
Please post he new log if it doesn't work.

Re: How to recover partition(s) if sizes don't match?

Posted: 04 May 2016, 09:19
by citanul
That worked like a charm.

Thanks you SO MUCH Christophe!!!