Are multiple primary partitions okay?

How to use TestDisk to recover lost partition
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ferretwilliams
Posts: 3
Joined: 28 Jun 2016, 05:45

Are multiple primary partitions okay?

#1 Post by ferretwilliams »

This Windows 7 laptop stopped booting up, so I tried TestDisk and now only one partition is accessible, not even giving me the recovery option anymore. Asus's recovery program was popping up before I tried this, but since it said it would delete everything, I wanted to try to repair it first. Now it just asks for my OS disk, which computers no longer come with.

TestDisk is showing me 4 partitions, the third of which seems okay to delete(pressing P gives me "Can't open filesystem. Filesystem seems damaged."). The others, pressing left/right only give me P or no letter. No logical drive, no bootable drive. I guess no letter means Delete, but all tutorials include a D for that, as well as showing other options. When I ran TestDisk before, only the first partition had a letter by it, just like the screenshot attached. It MIGHT have had a P by the second partition, I doubt it, but I didn't take any notes. I didn't even save a log file because there was only one drive(I should've plugged in a flash drive and logged it anyway).
SO, since it's only giving me "P" as the option, should I set the 1st, 2nd, & 4th partitions to P? The word "Primary" sounds like there should only be one, but the program says, "Structure: Ok" when I set those 3 to P.
As you can see, I'm using TestDisk 6.14, because that's the version that was available on the Linux Mint 17.2 software manager(latest disk I had laying around).
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What I have thus far
What I have thus far
Screenshot of TestDisk.png (61.23 KiB) Viewed 1842 times

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cgrenier
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Re: Are multiple primary partitions okay?

#2 Post by cgrenier »

When using PC Intel partition table type, there can be up to 4 primary partitions.

Can you post the testdisk.log file content ? I need the actual partition layout. It may be useless to rewrite the partition table.
There are probably all P(rimary) except the first one that is *(bootable).

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ferretwilliams
Posts: 3
Joined: 28 Jun 2016, 05:45

Re: Are multiple primary partitions okay?

#3 Post by ferretwilliams »

TestDisk detected the drive as EFI GPT, which surprised me. fdisk didn't seem to like the GPT part of that when I tried that.
Since the site wouldn't allow me to attach a txt or log file, I'll post the entire contents of the file:

Code: Select all


Tue Jun 28 20:33:33 2016
Command line: TestDisk

TestDisk 6.14, Data Recovery Utility, July 2013
Christophe GRENIER <grenier@cgsecurity.org>
http://www.cgsecurity.org
OS: Linux, kernel 3.16.0-38-generic (#52~14.04.1-Ubuntu SMP Fri May 8 09:43:57 UTC 2015) x86_64
Compiler: GCC 4.8
Compilation date: 2013-10-29T01:29:29
ext2fs lib: 1.42.9, ntfs lib: libntfs-3g, reiserfs lib: none, ewf lib: none
/dev/sda: LBA, HPA, LBA48, DCO support
/dev/sda: size       1953525168 sectors
/dev/sda: user_max   1953525168 sectors
/dev/sda: native_max 1953525168 sectors
Warning: can't get size for Disk /dev/mapper/control - 0 B - 1 sectors, sector size=512
/dev/sr0 is not an ATA disk
Hard disk list
Disk /dev/sda - 1000 GB / 931 GiB - CHS 121601 255 63, sector size=512 - ST1000LM024 HN-M101MBB, S/N:S2TTJ9CC413165, FW:2AR10001
Disk /dev/sdb - 7803 MB / 7441 MiB - CHS 1019 241 62, sector size=512 - Kingston DataTraveler SE9, FW:PMAP
Disk /dev/sr0 - 1631 MB / 1555 MiB - 796544 sectors (RO), sector size=2048 - HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GT51N, S/N:KYSC4BB5000, FW:AS00

Partition table type (auto): EFI GPT
Disk /dev/sda - 1000 GB / 931 GiB - ST1000LM024 HN-M101MBB
Partition table type: EFI GPT
New options :
 Dump : No
 Align partition: Yes
 Expert mode : No

Interface Advanced
hdr_size=92
hdr_lba_self=1
hdr_lba_alt=1953525167 (expected 1953525167)
hdr_lba_start=34
hdr_lba_end=1953525134
hdr_lba_table=2
hdr_entries=128
hdr_entsz=128
 1 P MS Data                     2048     411647     409600 [SYSTEM]
     FAT32, blocksize=2048, 209 MB / 200 MiB

Analyse Disk /dev/sda - 1000 GB / 931 GiB - CHS 121601 255 63
hdr_size=92
hdr_lba_self=1
hdr_lba_alt=1953525167 (expected 1953525167)
hdr_lba_start=34
hdr_lba_end=1953525134
hdr_lba_table=2
hdr_entries=128
hdr_entsz=128
Current partition structure:
 1 P MS Data                     2048     411647     409600 [SYSTEM]

search_part()
Disk /dev/sda - 1000 GB / 931 GiB - CHS 121601 255 63
FAT32 at 0/32/33
FAT1 : 6622-7406
FAT2 : 7407-8191
start_rootdir : 8192 root cluster : 2
Data : 8192-409599
sectors : 409600
cluster_size : 4
no_of_cluster : 100352 (2 - 100353)
fat_length 785 calculated 785

FAT32 at 0/32/33
     MS Data                     2048     411647     409600 [SYSTEM]
     FAT32, blocksize=2048, 209 MB / 200 MiB
NTFS at 41/240/8
filesystem size           1901651968
sectors_per_cluster       8
mft_lcn                   786432
mftmirr_lcn               2
clusters_per_mft_record   -10
clusters_per_index_record 1
NTFS part_offset=344981504, part_size=973645807616, sector_size=512
NTFS partition cannot be added (part_offset<part_size).
NTFS at 41/240/8
filesystem size           1901651968
sectors_per_cluster       8
mft_lcn                   786432
mftmirr_lcn               2
clusters_per_mft_record   -10
clusters_per_index_record 1
     MS Data                   673792 1902325759 1901651968 [OS]
     NTFS, blocksize=4096, 973 GB / 906 GiB
NTFS at 118414/76/63
filesystem size           51198370
sectors_per_cluster       8
mft_lcn                   786432
mftmirr_lcn               3199898
clusters_per_mft_record   -10
clusters_per_index_record 1
     MS Data               1851127391 1902325760   51198370
     NTFS found using backup sector, blocksize=4096, 26 GB / 24 GiB
NTFS at 118414/76/63
filesystem size           51198370
sectors_per_cluster       8
mft_lcn                   786432
mftmirr_lcn               3199898
clusters_per_mft_record   -10
clusters_per_index_record 1
     MS Data               1902325760 1953524129   51198370 [Recovery]
     NTFS, blocksize=4096, 26 GB / 24 GiB

Results
   P MS Data                     2048     411647     409600 [SYSTEM]
     FAT32, blocksize=2048, 209 MB / 200 MiB
     MS Data                   673792 1902325759 1901651968 [OS]
     NTFS, blocksize=4096, 973 GB / 906 GiB
     MS Data               1851127391 1902325760   51198370
     NTFS found using backup sector, blocksize=4096, 26 GB / 24 GiB
     MS Data               1902325760 1953524129   51198370 [Recovery]
     NTFS, blocksize=4096, 26 GB / 24 GiB

interface_write()
 1 P MS Data                     2048     411647     409600 [SYSTEM]
simulate write!

TestDisk exited normally.
I'm tempted to just replace my mom's Windows 7 with Linux. She only uses the web browser, after all. It's her computer I'm fixing. :-)

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ferretwilliams
Posts: 3
Joined: 28 Jun 2016, 05:45

Re: Are multiple primary partitions okay?

#4 Post by ferretwilliams »

Aaand, since there's no reply, I'll just reinstall Windows with a Windows 10 disk, wiping the hard drive. I should have the computer backed up enough.

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