Please Help! PhotoRec OR TEST-DISK?

Using PhotoRec to recover lost data
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Author
ZoeEnPhos
Posts: 1
Joined: 12 Jul 2014, 22:12

Please Help! PhotoRec OR TEST-DISK?

#1 Post by ZoeEnPhos »

Hello dear Forum members!

I hope you are all well!

May I please ask for some help and advice as a total novice to use either the PhotoRec OR the TEST-DISK?
Recovery disk is a WD My Book Essentials 3.0TB w/ USB 3.0 with only big "partition" and it is hardware encrypted but the USB-HDD circuit board is fully functional - BUT after using this external USB disk on my new x64 based Win 8.1 it suddenly can´t be read or the files are not accessible, and after this all the problems started.
(Now I can SEE the USB-DISK as "My Book" with a new letter " I:\" that is inaccessible and whatever I do I can not SEE the files but get the advice to "Formatting Disk" and of course I click "Cancel". But this I know so far that the files ARE there but that I can NOT copy them to another disk - I am quite shocked after discovering this because I have been to confident that this WD My Book Essentials would be safely functional but now I learned my lesson...)
Still I have not lost all hopes so please help me out with these questions that are:

1 • can I plug this USB Disk via the USB-BOARD to my Win 7 x86 or 32-bit computer and DIRECTLY try to use PhotoRec in order to recover the Canon RAW-files (.CR2) about 80 000 or almost 2.2TB to another USB EXTERNAL DISK?
OR
2 • Must I first use TEST-DISK to search for that partition and scan the whole hard drive and then create a image.dd and AFTER that searching the image.dd created in TEST-DISK with PhotoRec?

The WD tells me that this external USB-disk is fore-formatted with NTFS-file type, but I do NOT know IF the BLOCKS are 512kb or are they maybe larger? (This My Book is purchased in December 2013)

So please help me also with the options if I should I only choose the .TIFF and .JPG files in order to search and also the most important that I also wish to KEEP and SAVE all the CONTENT of the inaccessible USB HARD DRIVE DISK in order to not overwrite the existing files, and again CAN I try to SEARCH the USB-DISK directly with PhotoRec WITHOUT (only reading and copying the existing findings) corrupting anything with other word is it totally safely to using PhotoRec directly (if that IS even possible)?

With a very big THANK to you, in advance, if someone have the time and wish to give me their valuable and great advice before I proceed with either the TEST-DISK OR PhotoRec?
All the Best wishes! /Charl (Sweden)
----Added---- the first TEST-DISK ANALYZE gave this logfile beginning.
Disk \\.\PhysicalDrive3 - 3000 GB / 2794 GiB - CHS 45599 255 63, sector size=4096 - WD My Book 1140, S/N:WMC1T0654192, FW:1025
Drive I: - 3000 GB / 2794 GiB - CHS 45599 255 63, sector size=4096 - WD My Book 1140, S/N:WMC1T0654192, FW:1025

Partition table type (auto): None
Drive I: - 3000 GB / 2794 GiB - WD My Book 1140
Partition table type: Intel

Analyse Drive I: - 3000 GB / 2794 GiB - CHS 45599 255 63
Geometry from i386 MBR: head=116 sector=52
BAD_RS LBA=218129509 5918957
check_part_i386 1 type 72: no test
BAD_RS LBA=729050177 1083631
check_part_i386 2 type 74: no test
BAD_RS LBA=168653938 1838434
Current partition structure:
1 * Sys=72 13577 238 11 119521 238 60 1701990410

Bad relative sector.
2 * Sys=74 45381 70 3 79242 34 29 543974724

Bad relative sector.
3 * NetWare 3.11+ 10498 56 41 10498 56 40 0

Bad relative sector.
Only one partition must be bootable
Space conflict between the following two partitions
1 * Sys=72 13577 238 11 119521 238 60 1701990410
2 * Sys=74 45381 70 3 79242 34 29 543974724

search_part()
Drive I: - 3000 GB / 2794 GiB - CHS 45599 255 63

User avatar
remy
Posts: 457
Joined: 25 Mar 2012, 10:21
Location: Strasbourg, France.
Contact:

Re: Please Help! PhotoRec OR TEST-DISK?

#2 Post by remy »

You may try to recover jpg and tiff files with photorec, this won't change your disk until you select a destination different that this disk. As far as it's not recognized, the file-system is probably not mounted and you won't probabely be able to overwrite, but be careful.

You may also have a result with testdisk in trying to find the previous file-system. Select partition type "EFI" because your disk is > than 2TB.

Post result of quickscan and deepersearch, or the logfile.

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