Messed Up External HD

How to use TestDisk to recover lost partition
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toraneko
Posts: 1
Joined: 21 Jul 2016, 06:15

Messed Up External HD

#1 Post by toraneko »

Hi,
I hope some people here can rescue me from a horrible computer migraine.
I have a HP Windows 10 PC and store a lot of things on a Seagate 5TB external hard drive. Something went terribly wrong though and I can no longer access any data on it. When you plug in the USB cable the PC will assign it a drive letter and the icon appears, though there is no other data like how much space is available on it etc. Right clicking and choosing Properties just brings up a generic page with Zero listed for data used and available.

I have close to 3TB of family photos, video etc on it - nothing irreplaceable, but it would be a massive migraine in finding and restoring everything.
I was told by someone to try Testdisk. With a quick search it found one of the larger folders I had, and I was able to download and save a lot of data
that way (it took 14 hours, almost staying up all night). But for the rest of the contents, I have had to try a deeper search.

My first issue is that at the rate I am timing its progress, it will take 9 straight days of going through the drive for this. Is this normal?
Secondly, it now is starting to find some serious errors on the drive - the first is "Bad Jump at FAT Partition", and now around 24% through,
it is coming up with countless read errors. I am including a screen shot.

Is this anything to be very worried about? Should I keep going or stop?

The second issue is that when it found one of the folders on the Seagate drive, I plugged in a 2TB travel drive I have to try and save the
data - then the same thing happened. The travel drive got corrupted by the PC also - there was nothing on it which is fine, and I reformatted it on another computer.
I plugged it into another port of my PC to see what would happen (this time a USB2, not 3 port) and it now seems to be working properly. But how do I fix my PC if it
corrupts what I plug in it?

Many thanks for your help.
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cgrenier
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Re: Messed Up External HD

#2 Post by cgrenier »

It's useless to search partitions inside a partition (here M:).
Run TestDisk, select the physicaldrive, in Advanced, select the parition, Boot, RebuildBS, List.
If you can see your files, choose Write, confirm, Quit, restart your computer.

mozty
Posts: 3
Joined: 28 Jul 2016, 01:42

Re: Messed Up External HD

#3 Post by mozty »

cgrenier wrote:It's useless to search partitions inside a partition (here M:).
Run TestDisk, select the physicaldrive, in Advanced, select the parition, Boot, RebuildBS, List.
If you can see your files, choose Write, confirm, Quit, restart your computer.
Dear @cgrenier,
I have a similar problem with a lost partion on a 1TB WD My Book Elite external drive. I wanted to make sure before I proceed not to mess up the entire process and the data there is to be recovered. (Even the partition is lost, I see all my folders and files thanks to TestDisk)
So I execute TestDisk >> Create and see all drives connetted to my PC
then choose Disk\\.\PhysicalDrive1 - 999 GB \ 930 GiB >> Proceed >> Intel >> in Advanced there is only this P HPFS - NTFS partition to select >> Boot
The results: Boot sector: OK, Backup boot sector: OK, Sectors are identical. >> RebuildBS >> List >> all the folders and files are there
Now, my questions are:
1. I dont have enough space to copy all the selected folders/files into my fixed HD, if I add another external drive will I be able to copy these there?
2. How to fix my existing 1TB WD My Book Elite?

Thanks in advance.

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cgrenier
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Re: Messed Up External HD

#4 Post by cgrenier »

mozty, run "cmd" (right click as Administrator) and "chkdsk /f d:" (replace d: by the correct drive letter)

mozty
Posts: 3
Joined: 28 Jul 2016, 01:42

Re: Messed Up External HD

#5 Post by mozty »

Thanks Christophe,
I did the chkdsk /f. Found tons of error. Somehow an error occured at the very end of the process and was aborted. I will try again.
But before that, I wonder if I did something wrong when I did run TestDisk at the beginning. Because now, my 1TB WD My Book is shown as a "local disk"!! How can I set my external drive back as "removable storage"?

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cgrenier
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Re: Messed Up External HD

#6 Post by cgrenier »

TestDisk should have no impact on how Windows identify the disk as local or external.
If chkdsk failed again, you will really have to get another disk to copy the files to using testdisk.

mozty
Posts: 3
Joined: 28 Jul 2016, 01:42

Re: Messed Up External HD

#7 Post by mozty »

Christophe thanks again,
So, can I use 2 external drives with TestDisk to exchange discoverable files?
(being: [source A]-my existing corrupted external and [destination B]-a brand new external)
Regards,

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