Converted to "dynamic", deleted, recreated... My God. Topic is solved

How to use TestDisk to recover lost partition
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andmed
Posts: 2
Joined: 01 Jul 2012, 12:32

Converted to "dynamic", deleted, recreated... My God.

#1 Post by andmed »

Well, first of all testdisk is a great program, It is a pity I found it so late...

I am using x64 version of testdisk for Windows, and my case seems to be complicated.

1) Initially there were a basic disk, with some linux partitions at the beginning, and ntfs (~900G) volume to the end of the drive. The drive is "Advanced format" if it matters
2) I had back luck to think it was possible to easily delete linux partitions and extend the ntfs partition with the default tools in windows 7. Windows 7 let me do it, but on condition of converting the disk to "dynamic" only.. Since I was not going to boot it (I use the disk only for data), I agreed.
3) What I saw next was that Windows did not in fact extend my ntfs data partition, but, rather, created new in free space and add ntfs partition to it: there were seen clearly two different volumes, united under one drive letter.
4) Since that was not exactly what I meant, I selected the newly created (and added) volume only, and press "delete"... The Windows deleted BOTH (Ouch...), including the original ntfs partition with actual data, which was not selected. (I am not going to speculate here whether Windows is so user-friendly, or I am so stupid)
5) At this point i should have thought about restoring, but had no idea about testdisk yet, and since (I thought) I had backup, I decided just to create the partition anew, of a larger sizem and restore from backup. Unfortunately, there were some problems with backup, so I had to resort to google and found testdisk after all...


Now, what I have: I have a disk with partition, first, transformed to "dynamic disk", then deleted, and later, with the new basic disk partition recreated. It seems hopeless, but what might help - is that the latest partition (now in place) was created with bigger size and I was smart enough to not yet write anything to it, so (theoretically) original partition table should be intact.

Indeed, I can find it (see the picture)
Image

but unfortunatelly, it is said to be unrecoverable.
Image

Is it really?

andmed
Posts: 2
Joined: 01 Jul 2012, 12:32

Re: Converted to "dynamic", deleted, recreated... My God.

#2 Post by andmed »

Solved, all what was needed -- is to increase the number of cylinders in "geometry"
Thanks!(I even have my thesis.docx back ))))

User avatar
Fiona
Posts: 2835
Joined: 18 Feb 2012, 17:19
Location: Ludwigsburg/Stuttgart - Germany

Re: Converted to "dynamic", deleted, recreated... My God.

#3 Post by Fiona »

Thanks for your feedback! :)
I'll set your topic as solved.
Some hints;
Probably you used the 64bit-version instead of the 32bit-version.
It's only recommended if you have no WOW64 as some features are missing.
After increasing the amount of cylinders, did you copy your files?
Did you save the increased size to your disk?
If you saved it, you should set it back to the physically size.

Fiona

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