Testdisk fails to find Reserved partition 6TB External, hangs at 13%

How to use TestDisk to recover lost partition
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Author
Fitzroya
Posts: 1
Joined: 15 Sep 2019, 21:41

Testdisk fails to find Reserved partition 6TB External, hangs at 13%

#1 Post by Fitzroya »

After a file manager crash, my Seagate 6TB Backup Plus drive lost its MS Reserved partition. Windows can't access it and Disk Management says it is not initialized. Linux can read the Primary MS Data partition and files. Linux Gparted shows the first partition as Unallocated, 129mb, first sector 0 last 264191. Testdisk detects EFI/GPT partiion. Finds MS Data Primary starting 264192 and says structure OK. Continuing search, the program hangs at 13% after many repetitive entries. I need to make this disk readable in Windows and am unsure what to do next (Load Backup, or something else?) Brief Log text below, a much longer one from the 13% hang attached as .zip.

Sun Sep 15 13:55:37 2019
Command line: TestDisk

TestDisk 7.0, Data Recovery Utility, April 2015
Christophe GRENIER <grenier@cgsecurity.org>
http://www.cgsecurity.org
OS: Linux, kernel 4.15.0-54-generic (#58-Ubuntu SMP Mon Jun 24 10:55:24 UTC 2019) x86_64
Compiler: GCC 7.2
ext2fs lib: 1.44.1, ntfs lib: libntfs-3g, reiserfs lib: none, ewf lib: none, curses lib: ncurses 6.0
/dev/sdc: LBA, LBA48 support
/dev/sdc: size 976773168 sectors
/dev/sdc: user_max 976773168 sectors
Warning: can't get size for Disk /dev/mapper/control - 0 B - 0 sectors, sector size=512
Hard disk list
Disk /dev/sda - 6001 GB / 5589 GiB - CHS 729601 255 63, sector size=512 - Seagate Backup+ Hub BK, FW:D781
Disk /dev/sdb - 1999 GB / 1862 GiB - CHS 243151 255 63, sector size=512 - LSI 9750-4i DISK, FW:5.12
Disk /dev/sdc - 500 GB / 465 GiB - CHS 60801 255 63, sector size=512 - CT500MX500SSD1, S/N:1913E1F51601, FW:M3CR023

Partition table type (auto): EFI GPT
Disk /dev/sda - 6001 GB / 5589 GiB - Seagate Backup+ Hub BK
Partition table type: EFI GPT

Analyse Disk /dev/sda - 6001 GB / 5589 GiB - CHS 729601 255 63
hdr_size=92
hdr_lba_self=1
hdr_lba_alt=11721045166 (expected 11721045166)
hdr_lba_start=34
hdr_lba_end=11721045133
hdr_lba_table=2
hdr_entries=128
hdr_entsz=128
Current partition structure:
1 P MS Data 264192 11721043967 11720779776

search_part()
Disk /dev/sda - 6001 GB / 5589 GiB - CHS 729601 255 63
NTFS at 16/113/34
filesystem size 11720779776
sectors_per_cluster 8
mft_lcn 786432
mftmirr_lcn 2
clusters_per_mft_record -10
clusters_per_index_record 1
NTFS part_offset=135266304, part_size=6001039245312, sector_size=512
NTFS partition cannot be added (part_offset<part_size).
NTFS at 16/113/34
filesystem size 11720779776
sectors_per_cluster 8
mft_lcn 786432
mftmirr_lcn 2
clusters_per_mft_record -10
clusters_per_index_record 1
MS Data 264192 11721043967 11720779776
NTFS, blocksize=4096, 6001 GB / 5588 GiB

Results
P MS Data 264192 11721043967 11720779776
NTFS, blocksize=4096, 6001 GB / 5588 GiB

Hint for advanced users. dmsetup may be used if you prefer to avoid to rewrite the partition table for the moment:
echo "0 11720779776 linear /dev/sda 264192" | dmsetup create test0

interface_write()
1 P MS Data 264192 11721043967 11720779776
simulate write!
SIGHUP detected! TestDisk has been killed.
Attachments
testdisk_6tb_long.log.zip
(24.06 KiB) Downloaded 170 times

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cgrenier
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Re: Testdisk fails to find Reserved partition 6TB External, hangs at 13%

#2 Post by cgrenier »

The log shows a lot of read errors. They are probably due to bad sectors or a damaged head.
You can try to clone the disk to a new empty one using ddrescue as described in https://www.cgsecurity.org/testdisk.pdf
If it doesn't work or if it's too complex, you should contact a data recovery company.

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