Recovering a HDD with corrupt boot sectors and unknown filesystem

How to use TestDisk to recover lost partition
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Svettigajim
Posts: 1
Joined: 11 Sep 2020, 17:04

Recovering a HDD with corrupt boot sectors and unknown filesystem

#1 Post by Svettigajim »

Hi, first of all I want to explain that i've tried to find some guides and have read the documentation for testdisk, but since English isn't my native language I still feel a bit uncertain

I'm trying to get an old HDD to work again after it became corrupt when we had a power outage five years ago.
The drive is a WD30EFRX.
I haven't had the courage to try to get it working again but now that I'm older I've decided to try again as it contains all my memories and raw material from working abroad as a videographer in Italy for three months.

As it was five years ago I don't remember the format type of the disk but it's either
EXfat, HFS or HFS+, I suspect HFS based on the results from testdisk but windows CMD contradicted this with ExFat when I ran the Chkdsk command.

I'm currently running the Deep analysis of the drive to get more info.

I hope someone can clarify what to do based on these results and recommend a way to proceed after the analysis.

Disk Manager reports the disk as RAW

CMD results
C:\Users\User>chkdsk d: /r
The type of the file system is exFAT.
Volume Serial Number is 57FB-FA4F
Both copies of the boot information for this volume are corrupt.
Chkdsk cannot continue.
An error occurred while examining the boot region.

Testdisk
TestDisk 7.2-WIP, Data Recovery Utility, August 2020 Christophe GRENIER <grenier@cgsecurity.org> https://www.cgsecurity.org

Disk /dev/sdc - 3000 GB / 2794 GiB - CHS 364801 255 63

Analyse cylinder 4851/364800: 01%

check_FAT: Unusual media descriptor (0xf0!=0xf8)
Warning: number of heads/cylinder mismatches 16 (FAT) != 255 (HD)
Warning: number of sectors per track mismatches 32 (FAT) != 63 (HD)
EFI System 40 409639 409600 [EFI System Partition] [EFI]
check_FAT: Unusual media descriptor (0xf0!=0xf8)
Warning: number of heads/cylinder mismatches 16 (FAT) != 255 (HD)
Warning: number of sectors per track mismatches 32 (FAT) != 63 (HD)
EFI System 46 409645 409600 [EFI System Partition] [EFI]
Mac HFS 409640 5860270983 5859861344
MS Data 411648 5860532223 5860120576
Mac HFS 499904 5860361247 5859861344
Mac HFS 500040 5860361383 5859861344
Mac HFS 500544 5860361887 5859861344
Mac HFS 500648 5860361991 5859861344
Mac HFS 500800 5860362143 5859861344
Mac HFS 502936 5860364279 5859861344
Mac HFS 503056 5860364399 5859861344
Mac HFS 503112 5860364455 5859861344
Mac HFS 503200 5860364543 5859861344
Mac HFS 575424 5860436767 5859861344

/Jim, Sweden

recuperation
Posts: 2720
Joined: 04 Jan 2019, 09:48
Location: Hannover, Deutschland (Germany, Allemagne)

Re: Recovering a HDD with corrupt boot sectors and unknown filesystem

#2 Post by recuperation »

Svettigajim wrote: 11 Sep 2020, 17:57 Hi, first of all I want to explain that i've tried to find some guides and have read the documentation for testdisk, but since English isn't my native language I still feel a bit uncertain

I'm trying to get an old HDD to work again after it became corrupt when we had a power outage five years ago.
The drive is a WD30EFRX.
I haven't had the courage to try to get it working again but now that I'm older I've decided to try again as it contains all my memories and raw material from working abroad as a videographer in Italy for three months.

As it was five years ago I don't remember the format type of the disk but it's either
EXfat, HFS or HFS+, I suspect HFS based on the results from testdisk but windows CMD contradicted this with ExFat when I ran the Chkdsk command.
Have you formated the drive on a Mac? Seeing the EFI partition suggests that it once was a bootable drive.

I'm currently running the Deep analysis of the drive to get more info.

I hope someone can clarify what to do based on these results and recommend a way to proceed after the analysis.
Once deep search is ready you systematically try to open each partition to see if you can find the data lost. If Testdisk succeeds it shows a menu to select file, folder and to copy them. Make sure you do not copy onto your broken source device but on another device with sufficiently free space.

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