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Hey I'm new to the forums and I'm not sure if this is the right subforum or if I'm supposed to be posting in the "Partition Recovery" subforum.

Here's my problem:

I have a 3TB external HDD that seems to have failed or partially failed. It contains old photos and documents. It's currently assigned drive letter M. When I go into Disk Management this is what I see:
https://i.imgur.com/XCchjM3.png

If I try to open the drive in Windows Explorer this is what I see:
https://i.imgur.com/ZFZM1bu.png

I tried to attach the drive to a linux machine and it says I should run Windows chkdsk on it. When I try to run chkdsk this is what comes up:
https://i.imgur.com/GpkEjS4.png

I'm new to TestDisk but this is the first screen that comes up after I select 'No Log':
https://i.imgur.com/7yhxjGq.png

I think the first drive listed is my internal 3TB drive. The last three drives listed seem to all be the same physical drive (the corrupt 3TB external drive). All three of them show 'None' as the partition table type on the next screen after I select them.

Is there any hope in recovering my data?! Could anyone point me in the right direction?

Thanks!

You can select PhysicalDrive2

Thanks for the quick reply!

Once I select PhysicalDrive2 should I select 'none' for partition table type like TestDisk suggests? After that should I do 'Analyse' and then post more screenshots? Is the goal to use the 'Advanced' menu to rebuild the boot sector or something?

Hey so I did some more digging and took some more screenshots.

If I select 'None' as the partition type:
https://imgur.com/a/9mNYl

If I select 'Intel' as the partition type:
https://imgur.com/a/NGVwu

A couple of things don't seem right to me - the 'can't open filesystem' error and the 'bad relative sector'/'space conflict' messages. There definitely used to be only one partition the size of the entire drive (3TB) and it was just data (no system) so it's also weird that when 'Intel' is selected the partition is listed as 'primary bootable' with the asterisk instead of just 'primary' with the P.

Hope that helps.

Thanks!

As the disk is over 2 TB, choose EFI GPT.

Thanks!

So when I select GPT I get 'bad GPT partition, invalid signature':

https://imgur.com/nw405Xj

It does find one partition, but it starts at 63 (I assume it's supposed to start at 0 or 1?):

https://imgur.com/HizThzm

I'm doing a deeper search right now. Should I write that structure to the disk? What should I do next?

Thank you again.

Not sure how helpful of an update this is, but:

https://imgur.com/idUG1tO

Thanks!

Try TestDisk, PC Intel, Advanced, Boot, RebuildBS, List.
If you see your files, choose Write, confirm, Quit and restart your computer.

I thought I was supposed to use GPT instead of Intel/PC because the drive is over 2TB?

Thanks!