*** Just let me know if I need to seek help elsewhere. Any help is appreciated. I've done a lot of research and most of it was from these forums.
SITUATION - THE CAUSE:
After installing Ubuntu 18.04, Windows 10 wouldn't boot. Normally I just reinstall windows. On&off research pointed to a missing boot-partition so I created one with the Recovery command-line from the install disk. I switched the C volume over to the correct partition and ran: bootrec /rebuildbcd. I didn't realize it would write it over the first partition of the first drive. The strange thing is, while windows once-again booted just-fine, I could still access my files perfectly in Ubuntu!
In windows 10 I started to setup Ext2Fsd (I think it was) to re-link (or reinstall) my Steam game-archive. The Windows 10 Disk Management displayed the drive as "Unknown" ... said there was a problem but it could fix it automatically. I said "OK/Yes" and that was "the" huge mistake. The boot-partition was now visible and the rest of the drive was labeled "Unknown" (or "Unformatted", I forgot which). I booted back into ubuntu and see the same thing in "disks". 17mb for the boot partition and the rest labeled "Free Space"/"Unallocated Space". Sigh... I'm currently staying in Ubuntu until this is fixed.
SITUATION - IN TESTDISK:
Testdisk gave me a little bit of hope. Using the default sector size of 512, scans easily picks up my partition name I used: [sda - 4TB WD] but the ones with files listed show seemingly random-character file-name mess.
SITUATION - OTHER STUFF:
- The damaged sda partition was just used as a file-storage archive: Photos, Music, Documents, Game-Installs, etc...
- I have a new 4TB drive (I'll later use for backups) arriving today to backup the damaged drive.
- Using DD, I've created an image file of the first 1GB of the drive. However, I can't mount it. Is there some way I can use this backup to scan instead of the original drive that is 400x larger?
- A "quick" scan takes about 6 hours. A "detailed" scan takes about 9 hours.
- Table: Honestly I'm not sure if I used GPT. I think I did but I'm not sure. If I could use EXT4 without a partition table ("None"), I might have done that (which was a year ago).
- Sectors: I think the sector size was large. Either 4016 or 6000something. I don't think it was as high as 8000...
- 4 or 5 times: Pressed "ENTER" to "Continue" instead of "P" to "View Files". Sigh... It has been days.
- One QUICK scan: INTEL & EXT4 using a sector size of the default 512. Some possible partitions but none with files.
- Two DETAILED scans: GPT & EXT4 using a sector size of the default 512. Some possible partitions, 1 or 2 with files of garbled-names.
- INFO: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1is3hyY ... sp=sharing
- Fdisk -lu: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1FwHlU ... CIA1QrU6Gs
- QUICK #1: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1hvsX_ ... Nj4l-SWKq3
- DETAILED #1: https://drive.google.com/open?id=16IcrI ... TTh7qQDqpB
- DETAILED #2: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1s4XX2 ... dtnAcQN-xC
STOPPED > Running a DETAILED scan: GPT & EXT4 using a sector size of 4016. (I just noticed the sector size today.) I may have to restart this scan if I have time to install the drive before leaving for work.
STARTED > Running a backup using DD onto a new 4tb disk. At this rate it should be done July 8th~ish?