Harddisk Seems too Small / partition can't be recovered

How to use TestDisk to recover lost partition
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InNeedofHelp
Posts: 1
Joined: 27 Mar 2019, 17:48

Harddisk Seems too Small / partition can't be recovered

#1 Post by InNeedofHelp »

Hello all,

First off, thank you so much for this great software and community.
I am of course here because I am in need of desperate help. My 1.5TB WD external HD was suddenly inaccessible recently. I don't know if it was coincidence but it could have happened after windows update.

After trying to get it to connect, I got the cyclic redundancy error. I could not run checkdisk to fix the error. I made a mistake by panicking and rushing to use EaseUS to try to convert the HD to raw format and my computer crashed at some point in the process. I tried running photorec to recover my images and it did recover a certain amount of files, but after 23 hours had elapsed, it appeared to stop/hang and then said estimated time was 559 hours or so. I then ran Analyse partition structure and it showed the first partition listed twice. Below is an image of the results after searching.

If I had let photorec continue running, would it have possible found more files? Is there a certain point were you would just stop letting it run?
Can anyone help with what action I should take next going off of the attached image? I'm so lost right now. Thanks in advance.
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cgrenier
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Re: Harddisk Seems too Small / partition can't be recovered

#2 Post by cgrenier »

You have seen CRC errors, it means there are bad sectors.
You should clone the disk using ddrescue to a new empty disk using ddrescue as described in https://www.cgsecurity.org/testdisk.pdf
Once it's done, remove the original disk and try photorec on the clone.
Good luck

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