Geometry missmatch, info in hitachi website seems wrong

How to use TestDisk to recover lost partition
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SamaelThuum
Posts: 1
Joined: 30 Dec 2017, 17:47

Geometry missmatch, info in hitachi website seems wrong

#1 Post by SamaelThuum »

Hi everyone, I desperately need your help please, I have a HTS725050A7E630, used to have 3 big partitions all GPT, one NTFS 107GB from beggining, another NTFS like 340GB and another Ext4 like 26GB at the end that I made to install Linux Mint to recover the first two because I dropped the laptop and Win 10 64 which was in the 107GB died completely. I went to try install it again from USB I created from LinuxMint 18 in GPT USB and BIOS and during Windows 10 installation, I tried to delete the ext4 partition that had Mint and it failed gave error and all partitions were gone, whole disk showed unallocated space 465gb aprox, Im now trying from a live Mint from a USB with TestDisk but after I choose partition table EFI GPT (also says detected on bottom) it says to correct disk geometry on bottom, by default says 60801 Cyl 255 63 512, I looked up>

https://www.hgst.com/sites/default/file ... c_v3.2.pdf

Page 15 says Cyl 16383, sectors 63, heads 16, size 4K, according to that PDF that accounts for 500,107,862,016 bytes, which sounds correct, I tried changing this to testdisk but it assumes disk is only 67GB??? I've also seen people run diskdiagnostic tools on this same HDD and they show diff results>

https://www.ebay.com/itm/HGST-500GB-Int ... Sw~vpaDFnT
Says Parameters 969021 cylinders, 16 heads, 63 sectors per track, 512 bytes per sector (I tried testdisk scan with these settings and gave like 4 geometry missmatch messages right at beggining of scan and scan was taking way too much time I stopped it, disk has many failures, scans freeze at many points)

https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-X ... -p/1707585
Says it reported same default assumption testdisk tells me 60801 255 63 512

Please help I cannot afford loosing the data in the 340GB partition, I cannot go pay 200 dollars to an expert, I just cant. Thank you so much for your help; I'll try to make donnations to contributors if we can fix this HDD, thanks.

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cgrenier
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Re: Geometry missmatch, info in hitachi website seems wrong

#2 Post by cgrenier »

You can ignore the disk geometry as long as the disk capacity is correct.
Read https://www.cgsecurity.org/testdisk.pdf chapter "Recovering deleted partition using TestDisk".
It's best to use TestDisk 7.1-WIP than older versions.

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