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GPT to MBR switch error

Posted: 30 Apr 2018, 17:05
by richloomis
I purchased a bare bones, stand-alone WD hard drive from Amazon, and used it with a "universal" style edge connector USB dongle and had the HD sitting on a shelf during use. Worked fine for more than a year, but "something" weird happened (perhaps via assigning a new drive letter, am not sure) such that the next time I tried to access it, no success. Shows as not initialized and no drive letter in Disk Management. Right clicking on drive within Disk Management does NOT bring up an option for assigning a drive letter. Instead a small box shows only four items available: Initialize Disk (grayed out), Offline, Properties, Help. Right clicking on the black single partition area brings up seven options (the first five are grayed out): New Simple Volume, New Spanned Volume, New Striped Volume, New Mirrored Volume, New Raid-5 Volume, Properties, Help.

Using CMD with administrator privileges so as to use the diskpart process does not work. Neither "list disk" nor "list volume" shows the plugged-in disk, only shows the SSD integral boot disk. Third party software does show the disk, but the only option is to perform a VERY long "repair" process for which I would first have to purchase another high capacity disk to transfer the data onto etc. So my hope is that the hardware/software problem can be fixed without doing all that.

I posted this problem at bleepingcomputer.com forums and got some help . . apparently some sort of glitch (or someone messing with my computer remotely?) caused the drive to somehow re-configure from GPT to MBR . . a fellow there had me try the TestDisk program, and I followed his suggestions as best as I could understand them, and posted screenshots of the results on the following forum link (I'm not sure if it will come up but beats trying to repeat every detail all over again):

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums ... ve-letter/

Any ideas? Thanks

Re: GPT to MBR switch error

Posted: 04 May 2018, 05:52
by cgrenier
As testdisk has been able to find your partition and been able to list your files, you should write the new EFI GPT partition table with your NTFS partition.
The warning about the sector size isn't a real problem as long as you can see your files.

Re: GPT to MBR switch error

Posted: 02 Jul 2018, 16:06
by Patrick77
Hello,
I have the same Problem with my secondary internal drive.

you mentioned to write the EFI GPST partition table...how could I do that?


Thank you very much for your help

Patrick

Re: GPT to MBR switch error

Posted: 03 Jul 2018, 05:41
by cgrenier
Patrick77, after selecting the disk, you choose [EFI GPT] instead of [Intel].
Once it's done, Analyse, Quick Search... When all your partitions are listed, choose Write, confirm, Quit

Re: GPT to MBR switch error

Posted: 03 Jul 2018, 18:10
by Patrick77
Thanks a lot,
that explain why I did'nt understand that.
My HDD is not shown in the selection menu, but in the windows disk management (as unassigned, with 0GB capacity)

Thanks again
Patrick

Re: GPT to MBR switch error

Posted: 06 Jul 2018, 05:56
by cgrenier
Looks like contacting a data recovery company is the only remaining option.
Sorry

Re: GPT to MBR switch error

Posted: 08 Jul 2018, 06:38
by Patrick77
thats what I feard. But thank you very much for your help!

Re: GPT to MBR switch error

Posted: 28 Jul 2018, 02:35
by chandler
I have a similar problems. Seems like I get to contact a data recovery company...