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No partition found, drive too small.

Posted: 22 Jan 2013, 03:20
by norritt
I am trying to recover data from an external WD SATA hard drive. It is a 1TB drive, that should have some pictures on it in addition to whatever else my sister happened to throw on there, possibly a backup image, who knows. She is running Vista. Apparently the HD fell and cracked the external case. I disconnected the converter so I could plug it in as an internal drive and popped it into my machine. I discovered that Windows (Win7 64) wouldn't recognize it as a drive. It does however recognize the physical media in the device settings and in the BIOS.

I am new to Testdisk and PhotoRec, but they are awesome tools! I left PhotoRec to run overnight first. and it recovered a couple thousand files, mostly weird text files, java files, and some random JPG and PNGs, as well as some extremely large(10+GB) SWF files. None of the images were useful, just some lame GUI interface icons and stock backgrounds. The thousands of text files contained what looked like HTML, JAVA, or some other code fragments, not actual text documents.

So I ran TestDisk next. It would not recognize any bootable partitions, and both the quick and deep search resulted in a few excerpts below (full log at the end). From the stuff I found elsewhere in the forum it looks like I might be stuck and the only way to recover would be a professional service.

---LOG Excerpt---

Analyse Disk \\.\PhysicalDrive1 - 1000 GB / 931 GiB - CHS 121601 255 63
Current partition structure:
No partition is bootable
search_part()
Disk \\.\PhysicalDrive1 - 1000 GB / 931 GiB - CHS 121601 255 63
BAD_RS LBA=1536801394 13221116
check_part_i386 failed for partition type 07
HPFS - NTFS 95661 117 59 348707 61 58 4065180462
This partition ends after the disk limits. (start=1536801394, size=4065180462, end=1307014559, disk end=1953525168)
Disk \\.\PhysicalDrive1 - 1000 GB / 931 GiB - CHS 121601 255 63
Check the harddisk size: HD jumpers settings, BIOS detection...
The harddisk (1000 GB / 931 GiB) seems too small! (< 2868 GB / 2671 GiB)
The following partition can't be recovered:
HPFS - NTFS 95661 117 59 348707 61 58 4065180462

---LOG Excerpt End---

Based on this info can anyone else provide any ideas or suggestions? Much appreciated!

Full Log file follows:
Mon Jan 21 10:13:55 2013
Command line: TestDisk

TestDisk 6.14-WIP, Data Recovery Utility, December 2012
Christophe GRENIER <grenier@cgsecurity.org>
http://www.cgsecurity.org
OS: Windows 7 (7601) SP1
Compiler: GCC 4.7, MinGW 3.11
Compilation date: Jan 6 2013 21:07:21
ext2fs lib: none, ntfs lib: 10:0:0, reiserfs lib: none, ewf lib: 20120504
disk_get_size_win32 IOCTL_DISK_GET_LENGTH_INFO(\\.\PhysicalDrive0)=500113080320
disk_get_size_win32 IOCTL_DISK_GET_LENGTH_INFO(\\.\PhysicalDrive1)=1000204886016
disk_get_size_win32 IOCTL_DISK_GET_LENGTH_INFO(\\.\PhysicalDrive2)=320072933376
disk_get_size_win32 IOCTL_DISK_GET_LENGTH_INFO(\\.\C:)=500006125568
disk_get_size_win32 IOCTL_DISK_GET_LENGTH_INFO(\\.\D:)=320070288384
Hard disk list
Disk \\.\PhysicalDrive0 - 500 GB / 465 GiB - CHS 60801 255 63, sector size=512
Disk \\.\PhysicalDrive1 - 1000 GB / 931 GiB - CHS 121601 255 63, sector size=512
Disk \\.\PhysicalDrive2 - 320 GB / 298 GiB - CHS 38913 255 63, sector size=512
Drive C: - 500 GB / 465 GiB - CHS 60788 255 63, sector size=512
Drive D: - 320 GB / 298 GiB - CHS 38912 255 63, sector size=512

Partition table type default to Intel
Disk \\.\PhysicalDrive1 - 1000 GB / 931 GiB
Partition table type: Intel

Analyse Disk \\.\PhysicalDrive1 - 1000 GB / 931 GiB - CHS 121601 255 63
Current partition structure:
No partition is bootable

search_part()
Disk \\.\PhysicalDrive1 - 1000 GB / 931 GiB - CHS 121601 255 63
BAD_RS LBA=1536801394 13221116
check_part_i386 failed for partition type 07
HPFS - NTFS 95661 117 59 348707 61 58 4065180462
This partition ends after the disk limits. (start=1536801394, size=4065180462, end=1307014559, disk end=1953525168)
Disk \\.\PhysicalDrive1 - 1000 GB / 931 GiB - CHS 121601 255 63
Check the harddisk size: HD jumpers settings, BIOS detection...
The harddisk (1000 GB / 931 GiB) seems too small! (< 2868 GB / 2671 GiB)
The following partition can't be recovered:
HPFS - NTFS 95661 117 59 348707 61 58 4065180462

Results

interface_write()

No partition found or selected for recovery
simulate write!

write_mbr_i386: starting...
write_all_log_i386: starting...
No extended partition

Interface Advanced
New options :
Dump : No
Align partition: Yes
Expert mode : No

Analyse Disk \\.\PhysicalDrive1 - 1000 GB / 931 GiB - CHS 121601 255 63
Current partition structure:
No partition is bootable

search_part()
Disk \\.\PhysicalDrive1 - 1000 GB / 931 GiB - CHS 121601 255 63
BAD_RS LBA=1536801394 13221116
check_part_i386 failed for partition type 07
HPFS - NTFS 95661 117 59 348707 61 58 4065180462
This partition ends after the disk limits. (start=1536801394, size=4065180462, end=1307014559, disk end=1953525168)
Disk \\.\PhysicalDrive1 - 1000 GB / 931 GiB - CHS 121601 255 63
Check the harddisk size: HD jumpers settings, BIOS detection...
The harddisk (1000 GB / 931 GiB) seems too small! (< 2868 GB / 2671 GiB)
The following partition can't be recovered:
HPFS - NTFS 95661 117 59 348707 61 58 4065180462

Results

interface_write()

No partition found or selected for recovery

search_part()
Disk \\.\PhysicalDrive1 - 1000 GB / 931 GiB - CHS 121601 255 63
BAD_RS LBA=1536801394 13221116
check_part_i386 failed for partition type 07
HPFS - NTFS 95661 117 59 348707 61 58 4065180462
This partition ends after the disk limits. (start=1536801394, size=4065180462, end=1307014559, disk end=1953525168)
Search for partition aborted
Disk \\.\PhysicalDrive1 - 1000 GB / 931 GiB - CHS 121601 255 63
Check the harddisk size: HD jumpers settings, BIOS detection...
The harddisk (1000 GB / 931 GiB) seems too small! (< 2868 GB / 2671 GiB)
The following partition can't be recovered:
HPFS - NTFS 95661 117 59 348707 61 58 4065180462

Results
Can't open backup.log file: No such file or directory
interface_load

interface_write()

No partition found or selected for recovery
simulate write!

write_mbr_i386: starting...
write_all_log_i386: starting...
No extended partition

Interface Advanced
New options :
Dump : No
Align partition: Yes
Expert mode : No
A new copy of MBR code has been written.
You have to reboot for the change to take effect.
New options :
Dump : No
Align partition: Yes
Expert mode : Yes

Interface Advanced

Analyse Disk \\.\PhysicalDrive1 - 1000 GB / 931 GiB - CHS 121601 255 63
Current partition structure:
No partition is bootable

search_part()
Disk \\.\PhysicalDrive1 - 1000 GB / 931 GiB - CHS 121601 255 63
Search for partition aborted

Results
Can't open backup.log file: No such file or directory
interface_load

interface_write()

No partition found or selected for recovery
simulate write!

write_mbr_i386: starting...
write_all_log_i386: starting...
No extended partition

Interface Advanced

TestDisk exited normally.