Tried to fix drive suddenly becoming RAW problem, I think I made things worse

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John34
Posts: 4
Joined: 24 Aug 2017, 14:34

Tried to fix drive suddenly becoming RAW problem, I think I made things worse

#1 Post by John34 »

My external drive (PQI 567L 500GB) became RAW as I unplugged it while I was downloading a torrent onto it, turns out driver letters were scrambled when I reinstalled the windows and I unplugged the wrong drive :(

Anyway, I tried fixing my problem following this guide https://html5.litten.com/updated-how-to ... ecame-raw/

I did nearly everything as it is said in that tutorial but in my case I was greeted with a warning :"Warning: the current number of heads per cylinder is 255 but the correct value may be 128" I ignored it. Quick search found only one partition: something - NTFS that contained my files so I wrote a new partition table without a problem (I mean it did not ask to fix the boot sector) After restart I got an error about unrecognisable USB drive so I uninstalled Unknown drivers and restarted my PC, the drive did show up but it was blank so I decided to write a new partition again but now I tried to change heads from 255 to 128 unfortunately I modified cylinders instead of heads, I really messed up. Then I tried to change CHS how it was before 60801/255/63 I think? (I am not sure). Since then I can not find any partition at all, it says partition read error, windows error message said "wrong parameter" (only I think it has stopped showing this error) and whenever I open my drive this testdisk CHS is set to 976784067 1 1

So is there any hope I can fix my drive without losing data? And will formatting at all fix the problems?

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cgrenier
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Re: Tried to fix drive suddenly becoming RAW problem, I think I made things worse

#2 Post by cgrenier »

Your computer BIOS is configured to boot from USB, not a good idea unless you plan to boot from your external disk or an USB key.

Run TestDsk, do nt modify the Geometry, Quick Search, set the partition as P(rimary) instead of *(bootable). On next screen, choose Write, confirm, Quit.

John34
Posts: 4
Joined: 24 Aug 2017, 14:34

Re: Tried to fix drive suddenly becoming RAW problem, I think I made things worse

#3 Post by John34 »

Here's what I did create>external drive (D)>intel>analyze - quick search

And here's what I see: Image

John34
Posts: 4
Joined: 24 Aug 2017, 14:34

Re: Tried to fix drive suddenly becoming RAW problem, I think I made things worse

#4 Post by John34 »

Update:

It was taking a lot of time and so I had to leave it overnight.
This is what I woke up to:

Image

John34
Posts: 4
Joined: 24 Aug 2017, 14:34

Re: Tried to fix drive suddenly becoming RAW problem, I think I made things worse

#5 Post by John34 »

I gave up, but when I tried to format the drive windows said it could not do so.

What can I do?

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