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Ddbuy
Posts: 3
Joined: 25 Mar 2025, 22:45

Bytes per sector error

#1 Post by Ddbuy »

Apologies if this question has already been asked. I did try and look back through the forum. I hope someone might have seen this before. I'm helping a family member out. After a power cut they couldn't access their data on a separate drive from the main os on their windows 10 machine. There were two drives with exactly the same partitions on the machine. I spoke to the person who put the machine together and he does not believe they were set up in raid(the power cut corrupted the bios which had to be reset so I can't know for sure what was originally set up). Windows does not think the partitions are formatted any more. When I run testdisk I get a warning that
"Warning: number of bytes per sector mismatches 1024 (NTFS) ! = 512 (HD)

I'm not sure what this means.

When I run a quick search it seems to find the partitions ok and when I look though the folder structure in testdisk the files and folders all seem to be there. So I selected write. However after rebooting nothing seems to have changed and windows still thinks the partitions are raw.

Hopefully I haven't caused any damage with the write(I have recovered the files with photorec but if possible I would prefer to resuscitate the partitions). When I run testdisk again it finds the partitions again and I can still see the files and folders. I please may I ask if anyone has any suggestion of this to try.
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recuperation
Posts: 3004
Joined: 04 Jan 2019, 09:48
Location: Hannover, Deutschland (Germany, Allemagne)

Re: Bytes per sector error

#2 Post by recuperation »

When you are using the word "drive", do you mean "partition" or "disk"?
People often use "drive" when referring to disks, but you are certainly aware of the term "c-drive" referring to a partition labeled "c".
Is the "separate drive" an external disk?

Please post your TestDisk log file.
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Ddbuy
Posts: 3
Joined: 25 Mar 2025, 22:45

Re: Bytes per sector error

#3 Post by Ddbuy »

thanks for having a look.

Sorry about the confusion there were 3 physical drives plugged into the machine at the time of the power cut one corsair SSD and 2 toshiba HDDs. There are two toshiba drives with exactly the same partitions and both inaccessible afterwards. Before I ran test disk I unplugged one so I knew which was which. The CT120BX500SSD1 is an ssd which I recovered fine with chkdsk.
So the toshiba below is the one whose partitions I am trying to recover. I think the file listings below were me and the person whose computer it is looking through to see if all the files looked like they were still there(it all looked good). So nothing seems to go wrong at the time of running testdisk.
The data I am looking for is in "2 P HPFS - NTFS 73 239 39 267349 56 35 4293777408 [Users]" this partition in the users folder.

Do you have any suggestions? Please see the log below(I had to trim away some of the file listings because it was too long to post on the forum):

Tue Mar 25 21:35:18 2025
Command line: TestDisk

TestDisk 7.2, Data Recovery Utility, February 2024
Christophe GRENIER <grenier@cgsecurity.org>
https://www.cgsecurity.org
OS: Windows 8 (9200)
Compiler: GCC 11.2, Cygwin 3001.4
ext2fs lib: 1.45.3, ntfs lib: available, reiserfs lib: none, ewf lib: 20140608, curses lib: ncurses 6.1
disk_get_size_win32 IOCTL_DISK_GET_LENGTH_INFO(\\.\PhysicalDrive0)=120034123776
disk_get_size_win32 IOCTL_DISK_GET_LENGTH_INFO(\\.\PhysicalDrive1)=3000592982016
disk_get_size_win32 IOCTL_DISK_GET_LENGTH_INFO(\\.\PhysicalDrive2)=123048296448
disk_get_size_win32 IOCTL_DISK_GET_LENGTH_INFO(\\.\PhysicalDrive3)=31406948352
disk_get_size_win32 IOCTL_DISK_GET_LENGTH_INFO(\\.\C:)=607125504
disk_get_size_win32 IOCTL_DISK_GET_LENGTH_INFO(\\.\D:)=607125504
disk_get_size_win32 IOCTL_DISK_GET_LENGTH_INFO(\\.\E:)=123046121472
disk_get_size_win32 IOCTL_DISK_GET_LENGTH_INFO(\\.\F:)=1064448
disk_get_size_win32 IOCTL_DISK_GET_LENGTH_INFO(\\.\G:)=119424417792
disk_get_size_win32 IOCTL_DISK_GET_LENGTH_INFO(\\.\H:)=2198414032896
disk_get_size_win32 IOCTL_DISK_GET_LENGTH_INFO(\\.\I:)=31405883392
disk_get_size_win32 IOCTL_DISK_GET_LENGTH_INFO(\\.\X:)=3162112
Hard disk list
Disk \\.\PhysicalDrive0 - 120 GB / 111 GiB - CHS 14593 255 63, sector size=512 - CT120BX500SSD1, S/N:1924E188457A, FW:M6CR013
Disk \\.\PhysicalDrive1 - 3000 GB / 2794 GiB - CHS 364801 255 63, sector size=512 - TOSHIBA HDWD130, S/N:59Q9PYRAS, FW:MX6OACF0
Disk \\.\PhysicalDrive2 - 123 GB / 114 GiB - CHS 14959 255 63, sector size=512 - SanDisk Cruzer Blade, S/N:04017410092524235539, FW:1.00
Disk \\.\PhysicalDrive3 - 31 GB / 29 GiB - CHS 3818 255 63, sector size=512 - SanDisk Cruzer Force, S/N:4C530001080812110281, FW:1.00
Drive X: - 3162 KB / 3088 KiB - CHS 193 16 2, sector size=512 - Microsoft Corporation RamDisk

Partition table type (auto): Intel
Disk \\.\PhysicalDrive1 - 3000 GB / 2794 GiB - TOSHIBA HDWD130
Partition table type: Intel

Analyse Disk \\.\PhysicalDrive1 - 3000 GB / 2794 GiB - CHS 364801 255 63
Geometry from i386 MBR: head=255 sector=63
NTFS at 0/32/33
Warning: number of bytes per sector mismatches 1024 (NTFS) != 512 (HD)
Info: size boot_sector 592896, partition 1185792
NTFS at 73/239/39
Warning: number of bytes per sector mismatches 1024 (NTFS) != 512 (HD)
Info: size boot_sector 2146888704, partition 4293777408
Current partition structure:
Warning: number of bytes per sector mismatches 1024 (NTFS) != 512 (HD)
1 * HPFS - NTFS 0 32 33 73 239 38 1185792 [System Reserved]
Warning: number of bytes per sector mismatches 1024 (NTFS) != 512 (HD)
2 P HPFS - NTFS 73 239 39 267349 56 35 4293777408 [Users]

search_part()
Disk \\.\PhysicalDrive1 - 3000 GB / 2794 GiB - CHS 364801 255 63
NTFS at 0/32/33
Warning: number of bytes per sector mismatches 1024 (NTFS) != 512 (HD)
filesystem size 592896
sectors_per_cluster 4
mft_lcn 49408
mftmirr_lcn 2
clusters_per_mft_record -10
clusters_per_index_record 1
HPFS - NTFS 0 32 33 73 239 38 1185792 [System Reserved]
NTFS, blocksize=4096, 607 MB / 579 MiB
NTFS at 73/239/39
Warning: number of bytes per sector mismatches 1024 (NTFS) != 512 (HD)
filesystem size 2146888704
sectors_per_cluster 4
mft_lcn 786432
mftmirr_lcn 2
clusters_per_mft_record -10
clusters_per_index_record 1
HPFS - NTFS 73 239 39 267349 56 35 4293777408 [Users]
NTFS, blocksize=4096, 2198 GB / 2047 GiB

Results
* HPFS - NTFS 0 32 33 73 239 38 1185792 [System Reserved]
NTFS, blocksize=4096, 607 MB / 579 MiB
P HPFS - NTFS 73 239 39 267349 56 35 4293777408 [Users]
NTFS, blocksize=4096, 2198 GB / 2047 GiB


dir_partition inode=5
P HPFS - NTFS 73 239 39 267349 56 35 4293777408 [Users]
NTFS, blocksize=4096, 2198 GB / 2047 GiB
Directory /
5 dr-xr-xr-x 0 0 0 21-Mar-2025 08:01 .
5 dr-xr-xr-x 0 0 0 21-Mar-2025 08:01 ..
169 dr-xr-xr-x 0 0 0 23-Aug-2020 00:26 $RECYCLE.BIN
1522358 dr-xr-xr-x 0 0 0 17-Aug-2022 11:01 SOW etc
36 dr-xr-xr-x 0 0 0 21-Aug-2021 12:03 System Volume Information
299 dr-xr-xr-x 0 0 0 17-Aug-2022 11:01 back-up
39 dr-xr-xr-x 0 0 0 3-Sep-2019 21:57 users
1516635 -r--r--r-- 0 0 8192 23-Jun-2023 01:45 DumpStack.log
1507840 -r--r--r-- 0 0 8192 8-Sep-2024 17:07 DumpStack.log.tmp
1522741 -r--r--r-- 0 0 519 28-Jan-2023 17:56 Elements (G) - Shortcut.lnk

interface_write()
1 * HPFS - NTFS 0 32 33 73 239 38 1185792 [System Reserved]
2 P HPFS - NTFS 73 239 39 267349 56 35 4293777408 [Users]
write!

write_mbr_i386: starting...
write_all_log_i386: starting...
No extended partition
You will have to reboot for the change to take effect.

TestDisk exited normally.
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recuperation
Posts: 3004
Joined: 04 Jan 2019, 09:48
Location: Hannover, Deutschland (Germany, Allemagne)

Re: Bytes per sector error

#4 Post by recuperation »

Copy all data to a healthy disk.
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Ddbuy
Posts: 3
Joined: 25 Mar 2025, 22:45

Re: Bytes per sector error

#5 Post by Ddbuy »

Thank you so much files copied out successfully.
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