Photorec finds partition, TestDisk doesn't
Posted: 24 Jun 2015, 15:06
I have an external 2TB Seagate GoFlex USB hard drive that has either failed hardware or a badly corrupted file system. I am trying to recover what I can using PhotoRec and TestDisk but even these tools are having problems.
The drive shows up in Win7 device manager and disk management - as "healthy" but "RAW". I tried to recover the partition using TestDisk - but it comes back "Partition: read error" and locks up. I can't seem to get TestDisk to read the drive.
However, when I select the drive in Photorec it says there is 1 partition; it's the length of the drive, and it's formatted as NTFS - i.e., it looks normal! I have been able to recover some files too - but after running several hours it says it has "10,000+ hours to go" so I shut it off. Upon examining the recovered files I found many of them were duplicates with different file names (some repeated hundreds of times). Other files were perfect.
So, what does all this mean? Why does Windows say it's "RAW" while PhotoRec says it "NTFS" and TestDisk can't read it at all? If the drive is mechanically bad (failed read heads, corrupt firmware, etc.) how was PhotoRec able to recover files?
I fear this drive is hopelessly scrambled but if there is still a chance to restore the file table what should I do next?
The drive shows up in Win7 device manager and disk management - as "healthy" but "RAW". I tried to recover the partition using TestDisk - but it comes back "Partition: read error" and locks up. I can't seem to get TestDisk to read the drive.
However, when I select the drive in Photorec it says there is 1 partition; it's the length of the drive, and it's formatted as NTFS - i.e., it looks normal! I have been able to recover some files too - but after running several hours it says it has "10,000+ hours to go" so I shut it off. Upon examining the recovered files I found many of them were duplicates with different file names (some repeated hundreds of times). Other files were perfect.
So, what does all this mean? Why does Windows say it's "RAW" while PhotoRec says it "NTFS" and TestDisk can't read it at all? If the drive is mechanically bad (failed read heads, corrupt firmware, etc.) how was PhotoRec able to recover files?
I fear this drive is hopelessly scrambled but if there is still a chance to restore the file table what should I do next?