HDD Corrupted

How to use TestDisk to recover lost partition
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louiebh
Posts: 17
Joined: 12 Jul 2012, 04:08

Re: HDD Corrupted

#21 Post by louiebh »

i attempted to create an image in in windows with test disk and that failed also is there a trick around this it just hung up around 20%

louiebh
Posts: 17
Joined: 12 Jul 2012, 04:08

Re: HDD Corrupted

#22 Post by louiebh »

louiebh wrote:i attempted to create an image in in windows with test disk and that failed also is there a trick around this it just hung up around 20%
please any followup on the help with thisS??

NeverSayDie
Posts: 6
Joined: 23 Jul 2012, 16:20

Re: HDD Corrupted

#23 Post by NeverSayDie »

Hi Louie

I saw in one post of yours that you had the partitions displaying correctly. Could you get back to that, highlight the partition that has the files you want and press P to see if you can see your files and folders?
http://i.imgur.com/uXyRo.jpg

If you can then you can attempt to copy them from there. If you get confused about how to navigate the directories and how to pick a proper place to recover them to, ask for more help on that.

If you can't see the files and folders there then if you had a drive with at least 550gb of free space on it that you could use to make an image of the whole bad drive then you have a good shot at getting an image that you can run a recovery on or maybe even repair and mount. I use ddrescue for that running from a PartedMagic LiveCD (which is all free and has TestDisk and PhotoRec on it also).

The problem with making an image of just the partition is that if ddrescue can't see the partition correctly (since you didn't write the partition table after it looked correct) then I don't think it will work.

Let me know if I'm missing something obvious here, it's a heavy thread :)
James

louiebh
Posts: 17
Joined: 12 Jul 2012, 04:08

Re: HDD Corrupted

#24 Post by louiebh »

ahh i can copy them from there? i will attempt to do that now and post results. I was able to see the drive contents last time though so i should be good to go. Im not able to clone the whole disk as my current spare drive is 320gb :( so im praying this works! Ill post back when i test this and see where i go from there thankyou for your reply!

louiebh
Posts: 17
Joined: 12 Jul 2012, 04:08

Re: HDD Corrupted

#25 Post by louiebh »

louiebh wrote:ahh i can copy them from there? i will attempt to do that now and post results. I was able to see the drive contents last time though so i should be good to go. Im not able to clone the whole disk as my current spare drive is 320gb :( so im praying this works! Ill post back when i test this and see where i go from there thankyou for your reply!
so i attempted to go to the screen and copying some files worked! hurray but it i couldnt copy some folders im not sure if maybe they were too big but when i selected to copy the program would hang so im not sure what the culprit was for that. I attempted chkdsk /f and /r in windows and when i did the cmd window appeared then quickly appeared and did nothing, any options to fully recover the drive? seems to hang when i clone it too

NeverSayDie
Posts: 6
Joined: 23 Jul 2012, 16:20

Re: HDD Corrupted

#26 Post by NeverSayDie »

Hi Louie

That's probably where some damage is on the hard drive. Can you drill down into those folders (press the right arrow key) and get some of the files in there individually?

That's one of the reasons that I use ddrescue to image drives like yours. Bad sectors don't crash or hang it like they do for many other programs when they try to access those bad areas. Then when you run the tools against the image, they don't crash at that point but the file that the bad area is in is often corrupted.

James

louiebh
Posts: 17
Joined: 12 Jul 2012, 04:08

Re: HDD Corrupted

#27 Post by louiebh »

NeverSayDie wrote:Hi Louie

That's probably where some damage is on the hard drive. Can you drill down into those folders (press the right arrow key) and get some of the files in there individually?

That's one of the reasons that I use ddrescue to image drives like yours. Bad sectors don't crash or hang it like they do for many other programs when they try to access those bad areas. Then when you run the tools against the image, they don't crash at that point but the file that the bad area is in is often corrupted.

James
ahh i see is my laptop doesnt have an optical drive is there a ddrescue for usb so i could boot it up and try this method of urs?

NeverSayDie
Posts: 6
Joined: 23 Jul 2012, 16:20

Re: HDD Corrupted

#28 Post by NeverSayDie »

Yes, there is a bootable USB version of the tools that I use but you can't do it because you don't have enough free space to hold an image of the entire drive and as I mentioned before...
The problem with making an image of just the partition is that if ddrescue can't see the partition correctly (since you didn't write the partition table after it looked correct) then I don't think it will work.
Have you tried using the right arrow key to drill down into the folders and attempt to recover specific files instead of just the whole folder?

James

User avatar
Fiona
Posts: 2835
Joined: 18 Feb 2012, 17:19
Location: Ludwigsburg/Stuttgart - Germany

Re: HDD Corrupted

#29 Post by Fiona »

If your able to list your files, please let me know from what partition.
It might be possible to diagnose your boot sector and repair it.

Fiona

louiebh
Posts: 17
Joined: 12 Jul 2012, 04:08

Re: HDD Corrupted

#30 Post by louiebh »

NeverSayDie wrote:Yes, there is a bootable USB version of the tools that I use but you can't do it because you don't have enough free space to hold an image of the entire drive and as I mentioned before...
The problem with making an image of just the partition is that if ddrescue can't see the partition correctly (since you didn't write the partition table after it looked correct) then I don't think it will work.
Have you tried using the right arrow key to drill down into the folders and attempt to recover specific files instead of just the whole folder?

James
I was able to recover some files seems to vary on the corrupted stuff some folders were a no go mostly media seemed alright but text documents are no good :(

Fiona wrote:If your able to list your files, please let me know from what partition.
It might be possible to diagnose your boot sector and repair it.

Fiona
I am able to list them fine the drive seems almost perfect after an analysis but when i progress from the menu before deeper search it seems ruined again :( so do let me know im close i know it!

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