Recover partition from RAID1 disks

How to use TestDisk to recover lost partition
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Author
Emerge
Posts: 3
Joined: 06 Feb 2019, 15:58

Recover partition from RAID1 disks

#1 Post by Emerge »

Hi!

First of all, thank you for your tools and your selfless help.

I have accumulated for several years, some external enclosures with 4TB disks in RAID1. This year I decided to undo the RAIDs, leave only one disk with the data and reuse the other disks.

When I take the disks out of the case and connect them to the computer, I can't access them. Windows detects the disk but says it has a GPT partition of 2048GB + 1678GB of unallocated space.

TestDisk (in Mac and Windows) detects disks without problems. If I select Intel partition type (which TestDisk detects by default) or GPT partition type (which I think is the correct), it shows some errors (only in Mac, in Windows no errors appear) but the partition is listed and I can access the files without problems and copy them to my computer.

I want to repair the disk so that I can access it normally using Windows file explorer. What do you recommend?

I am afraid to select "Write", write a wrong partition table and lose access to the data (I have already deleted some of the duplicated disks). Is it possible to make a backup of the state of the disk partitions in order to restore it and start from zero if there is a problem?

I have uploaded images of the whole process and the TestDisk log.

Thank you very much!

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cgrenier
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Re: Recover partition from RAID1 disks

#2 Post by cgrenier »

You should select EFI partition table, Analyse, Quick Search, 'p' to list the files.
If it's the correct files, choose Write, confirm, Quit and restart your computer.

Emerge
Posts: 3
Joined: 06 Feb 2019, 15:58

Re: Recover partition from RAID1 disks

#3 Post by Emerge »

Thank you cgrenier. It works. I can access my disks in Ubuntu & Mac, but not in Windows :shock:.

Emerge
Posts: 3
Joined: 06 Feb 2019, 15:58

Re: Recover partition from RAID1 disks

#4 Post by Emerge »

Problem solved.

I don't know why, but disks are unreadable in Windows (Win says "You need to format ...", but I can access without problems in Mac and Ubuntu. I repaired the boot sector with "Testdisk > Advanced > Rebuild BS" and after that, run "chkdsk /f" in Windows. Now my disks are working without problems in Windows.

Strangely enough, I've had to run the "Rebuild BS" command in Mac or Ubuntu. It doesn't work in Windows. Testdisk says sector in disk has 512 and NTFS must be 4096, and Testdisk can't rebuild BS correctly or access partition files. In Ubuntu (or Mac), all works without problems: no errors and files can be listed.

I hope this will help other people in the future.

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