TestDisk cannot find the partition that became unallocated

How to use TestDisk to recover lost partition
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AndyII
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Joined: 15 Apr 2012, 06:15

TestDisk cannot find the partition that became unallocated

#1 Post by AndyII »

I had a hard disk partitioned into C:, D:, and E:. I hadn't used E: in a while so I didn't notice it missing until I tried to save something to it yesterday.

It is 763.04 GB and is not listed as Unallocated.

I ran TestDisk in Deeper Search and it still finds nothing. I have (or had) dozens of downloads on this drive.

Is there something I can do to recover this partition? I do have a backup from 2015 but I'm not sure if I saved anything since then that I'll lose if I don't try the recovery first. If not recoverable, I could use some instruction on allocating this space to a drive letter. It's been a long time since I've done that.

Please help.

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cgrenier
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Re: TestDisk cannot find the partition that became unallocated

#2 Post by cgrenier »

You can use Window Disk Manager to create a partition from the unallocated space.

AndyII
Posts: 54
Joined: 15 Apr 2012, 06:15

Re: TestDisk cannot find the partition that became unallocated

#3 Post by AndyII »

How does that get my data back? How can I get that data back if TestDisk can't find it?

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cgrenier
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Re: TestDisk cannot find the partition that became unallocated

#4 Post by cgrenier »

You can use PhotoRec but it will not recover the original filenames or directory structure.
If you run it on the new partition, you may have to enable the expert mode in Options and choose a blocksize of 512 bytes, use the default values otherwise.

AndyII
Posts: 54
Joined: 15 Apr 2012, 06:15

Re: TestDisk cannot find the partition that became unallocated

#5 Post by AndyII »

Okay, thanks. I'll call that Plan B.

I'm still hoping to find something that will just get the partition back in one piece.

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cgrenier
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Re: TestDisk cannot find the partition that became unallocated

#6 Post by cgrenier »

TestDisk didn't find your lost partition after deeper search, so you have to go to plan B.

joan
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Joined: 27 Jan 2018, 12:35

Re: TestDisk cannot find the partition that became unallocated

#7 Post by joan »

Hi,
I had a similar problem. My primary data drive was listed as unformatted in Windows, and disk management listed it as a healthy primary partition, RAW, allocated but unformatted. TestDisk would show two weird partitions for it, and when doing quick search or deep search it wouldn't find anything. The Windows check on boot would stall at 0%.

What solved it for me was to run:
chkdsk /X /F D:
Where D: is the letter corresponding to the partition.
It spat a bunch of lines regarding corrupted files. Then I reboot and left the check disk run, and everything is now in order.

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