!!!URGENT!!! 3 years of huge data collection lost: USB dead after trying to make it bootable

[dkja]

Hi,

First, thanks for making such a useful software free and saving people from committing suicides.(seriously, cause they always say - this saved my life, ha ha ha ha)

Well, my problem started when, I wanted to create a Bootable Windows USB without formatting existing data as instructed in following tutorial.
http://www.intowindows.com/how-to-make- ... -withoutin addition to search.

Basically, it shows to copy all Win7 installer files to USB and using EasyBCD to make it bootable. All went fine until the last step, when I hit "Yes" in EasyBCD. BAM!!, the disk became unusable. Windows was still detecting the usb drive but the drive properties shows "USED space 0" "FREE space 0", file system "RAW".

I knew the data wasn't deleted. Luckily found Testdisk (src youtube). Ran it and there it is recovering those lost files. Wonderful.

However, can anybody advice on a "safe" way to bring the drive back to the stage it intially was as EastBCD may have just overwritten the boot-sector (or it's not that simple)? Anybuddy ?

Currently, TD is recovering the data (Estimated time: 30hrs). The problem is it's dumping files into one dir's without preserving original dir's structure.

My data files (12 gb) are mostly excel (xlsx) & mp3's and some pdf's, docs etd. Data was carefully manually organized under multiple folder's with many levels of hierarchy. Dir's name and position in hierarchy identified file's data, therefore folder hierarchy and name is critical otherwise it's another huge problem to arrange it back in the order it was.

Is there a way to preserve or at-least get file's parent dir's order/list and their resp. names.

Can TD detect dir's and do a search inside directory only in addition to file type search. The directory structure was something like:

ALL_data_dir (contains sub-dir's and data files within them)
(WIN7 installer dir's & files below)
boot
efi
sources
support
upgrade
autorun.inf
bootmgr
setup.exe

If I run TD with option to search for exe's, xlsx, pdf's, docs etc then it will search within each WIN7 dir's as well as "ALL_data" dir. Obvisously Win7 installer dir's will be having huge no. of above file types which significantly increase search times, not to mention the huge amount of time to identify and sort installer files separate from imp. data files in recovered files. Is there a way to overcome this problem?

I prefer GUI's (more options and easier interface). Can you tell which GUI packages use Testdisk as their core engine.

I am on Win 7 (32bit).
USB- initial file system: FAT32
Imp data is around 8GB on 16bg sandisk usb drive.

SUGGESTIONS:
1. Report xlsx as XLSX: TD reports XLSX ext's as ZIP's.(xlsx basically are archives). Perhaps you may want to change this.
2. Include an option to shutdown windows at the end of searching cause it takes hours to search the entire disk and these days they don't make small capacity disks.

Hope anybuddy can help here. Main concern is sorting useful data from win7 files and identifying directory structure.

thanks
dkja

[cgrenier]

photorec doesn't recover the file structure. Use testdisk instead
https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Step_By_Step

[dkja]

Hi Chris,

I am actually running PhotoRec, sorry for that. Although no one can be certain, but given your experience, do you really think running TD will help me get the USB to pre bootable disk creation stage.

thanks
dkja

[dkja]

Hi,

I stopped photorec and ran testdisk. Here are the screenshots and testdisk.log after drive analysis. This is all greek to me. Pls advice on what to do next:

Code: Select all

Sat Aug  6 19:39:11 2016
Command line: TestDisk

TestDisk 7.0, Data Recovery Utility, April 2015
Christophe GRENIER <grenier@cgsecurity.org>
http://www.cgsecurity.org
OS: Windows 7 (7600)
Compiler: GCC 4.8, Cygwin 1007.34
Compilation date: 2015-04-18T13:01:55
ext2fs lib: 1.42.8, ntfs lib: 10:0:0, reiserfs lib: 0.3.1-rc8, ewf lib: 20120504, curses lib: ncurses 5.9
disk_get_size_win32 IOCTL_DISK_GET_LENGTH_INFO(/dev/sda)=250059350016
disk_get_size_win32 IOCTL_DISK_GET_LENGTH_INFO(/dev/sdb)=16005464064
disk_get_size_win32 IOCTL_DISK_GET_LENGTH_INFO(\\.\PhysicalDrive0)=250059350016
disk_get_size_win32 IOCTL_DISK_GET_LENGTH_INFO(\\.\PhysicalDrive1)=16005464064
disk_get_size_win32 IOCTL_DISK_GET_LENGTH_INFO(\\.\C:)=62349377536
disk_get_size_win32 IOCTL_DISK_GET_LENGTH_INFO(\\.\D:)=52428800000
disk_get_size_win32 IOCTL_DISK_GET_LENGTH_INFO(\\.\E:)=16005447680
Hard disk list
Disk /dev/sda - 250 GB / 232 GiB - CHS 30401 255 63, sector size=512
Disk /dev/sdb - 16 GB / 14 GiB - CHS 1945 255 63, sector size=512
Drive C: - 62 GB / 58 GiB - CHS 7580 255 63, sector size=512
Drive D: - 52 GB / 48 GiB - CHS 6374 255 63, sector size=512
Drive E: - 16 GB / 14 GiB - CHS 1945 255 63, sector size=512

Partition table type (auto): None
Drive E: - 16 GB / 14 GiB
Partition table type: Intel

Analyse Drive E: - 16 GB / 14 GiB - CHS 1945 255 63
Geometry from i386 MBR: head=122 sector=32
BAD_RS LBA=1948285285 1565581
check_part_i386 1 type 6E: no test
BAD_RS LBA=0 5951390
check_part_i386 2 type 74: no test
get_geometry_from_list_part_aux head=255 nbr=1
get_geometry_from_list_part_aux head=8 nbr=1
get_geometry_from_list_part_aux head=16 nbr=1
get_geometry_from_list_part_aux head=32 nbr=1
get_geometry_from_list_part_aux head=64 nbr=1
get_geometry_from_list_part_aux head=128 nbr=1
get_geometry_from_list_part_aux head=240 nbr=1
get_geometry_from_list_part_aux head=255 nbr=1
Current partition structure:
 1 * Sys=6E               121275  38 17 227218 100 38 1701978223

Bad relative sector.
 2 * Sys=74                   0   0  1 715961557  87  2          0

Bad relative sector.
Only one partition must be bootable
Space conflict between the following two partitions
 2 * Sys=74                   0   0  1 715961557  87  2          0
 1 * Sys=6E               121275  38 17 227218 100 38 1701978223

search_part()
Drive E: - 16 GB / 14 GiB - CHS 1945 255 63
Search for partition aborted

Results

interface_write()		
 
No partition found or selected for recovery
simulate write!

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

TestDisk exited normally.

[dkja]

Can anybody help me out....Please this is very essentially truly urgent. Please advice.