HDD Corrupted

How to use TestDisk to recover lost partition
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Author
louiebh
Posts: 17
Joined: 12 Jul 2012, 04:08

HDD Corrupted

#1 Post by louiebh »

Hey there i had recently bought an ssd and went through and installed it on my laptop, i took the old hard drive inside and put it in a usb caddy so i could have access to my old files,

long story short i decided i wanted to migrate the hdd to the ssd but since my hdd was twice as big i had to make it smaller with a partiton manger, i ended up going through and doing so but midway through the partitioning i knocked the wire and it disconnected :( so ive corrupted the specific partition on my drive.

Im able to access the other partitions fine except this one which is most important to me, I tried to run test disk but when i run the deeper search scan it hangs and freezes and i get the program not responding then the hang begins i get the same crashes/hangs with a few other recovery programs that recognize the drive but since it crashes i can never seem to fix the drive so im really stuck i think it has something to do with bad sectors from some google searches but i have no idea how to go about fixing my hard drive now and accessing the files i really need, test disk can see the files with the p command but recovering it is causing me so much difficulty especially as im a novice

sorrry for the rambling pls help me!!

Seel
Posts: 3
Joined: 10 Mar 2012, 05:25
Contact:

Re: HDD Corrupted

#2 Post by Seel »

Hi louiebh,
Ok you can try Atola partition find and mount to see if the same problem occur. It is free as well but works only on windows. You can recover files as well directly but speed is slower on the free version.....worth giving it a shot.
You can check on this link for more info if you understand french.

If your main focus it to recover data, then you might want to boot from a usb key live ubuntu under windows. Might work as well...

Let us know

louiebh
Posts: 17
Joined: 12 Jul 2012, 04:08

Re: HDD Corrupted

#3 Post by louiebh »

Seel wrote:Hi louiebh,
Ok you can try Atola partition find and mount to see if the same problem occur. It is free as well but works only on windows. You can recover files as well directly but speed is slower on the free version.....worth giving it a shot.
You can check on this link for more info if you understand french.

If your main focus it to recover data, then you might want to boot from a usb key live ubuntu under windows. Might work as well...

Let us know
hey thanks for the reply i tried find and mount but it didnt seem to work for me yesterday ill try again, the drive comes up as raw anytime i try to click on it it asks me to format it, if i use ubuntu will it let me see the files and take what i need off it?

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

Re: HDD Corrupted

#4 Post by Fiona »

I'd need some infos from Analyse first.
It's your current partition table and not a Quick or Deeper Search where if you have some read errors TestDisk hangs.
If your partition ist still in your partition table, it would be worth to have a boot sector diagnose to get access to your files.

Just confirm at Analyse and upload a screen shot.

Fiona

louiebh
Posts: 17
Joined: 12 Jul 2012, 04:08

Re: HDD Corrupted

#5 Post by louiebh »

Fiona wrote:I'd need some infos from Analyse first.
It's your current partition table and not a Quick or Deeper Search where if you have some read errors TestDisk hangs.
If your partition ist still in your partition table, it would be worth to have a boot sector diagnose to get access to your files.

Just confirm at Analyse and upload a screen shot.

Fiona
Image

Image





heres the screenshot after analyse is complete, the one thats corrupted is the OS labelled partiton when i press p lists all of my files i cant access i believe thats a good thing, whats the next step i should take?

EDIT: i took pic of the next step Image

Im including an account of what happened before my crash which could help figure out whats going on here

i cant find a log of what happened but i remember what i did clearly:

-1st then reopened easus manager shrunk the size of my c:/ to about 240
-made a partition of 100gb called f:/ put my music/media files onto that

this bit was cool and straight forward now errors at that time then i realised my ssd wasnt 240 exactly it was 223gb so i had to delete some stuff so i went ahead and did that

The crash

- I reduced drive to about 210-215gb (since i shrunk it there was space after it inbetween c:/ and f:/)
- I shifted f:/ next to c:/ (OS) to fill up the unused space from the shrinkage and then hit apply

around quarter to halfway is when the crash happened and the usb disconnected i remember the sector being around something like 2 million out of 6-7 million but yeah hopefully this has given you a picture of what went down.
----

problem that has me puzzled and clueless is the last pic before i write the partition table~

there should be 3 (the recovery, OS aka the c:/, and the f:/) or 4 i believe being:
X dellutility
X recovery
C: os
F: *unlabled*



as you can see in the pic it only displays 2 partitions that i can write c:/ and the recovery which leads me to deep scan which ends up with the all the errors/hangs/crashes. So basically i cant tell if its going to write the correct partition table as it seems the sectors are overlapping as it was pointed out to me that the deleted recovery partition ending at 1491, but the next image shows 1490.

Help pls!

theAntiBob
Posts: 2
Joined: 05 May 2012, 22:46
Location: Alaska

Re: HDD Corrupted

#6 Post by theAntiBob »

I believe the instructions for solving your problem are listed at http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Step_By_Step.

theAntiBob
Posts: 2
Joined: 05 May 2012, 22:46
Location: Alaska

Re: HDD Corrupted

#7 Post by theAntiBob »

you may want to review the log file for the partition manager you were using to perfom these operations.
this should tell you how far along the operations were and in what order they were being performed before losing connection to the device.

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

Re: HDD Corrupted

#8 Post by Fiona »

Your OS-partition has a message that NTFS or exFAT boot is invalid.
It means either your boot sector or file system is damaged.
Could you diagnose your boot sector first?
Start TestDisk, confirm at create a log with enter and select your affected disk.
Confirm at partition table type with enter also
Don't confirm at Analyse but Advanced.
Confirm at Boot.
Please upload a screen.
Please check List and have a try to list your data.
If you can watch your data you can restore your boot sector.
If you receive an error message, please let me know.

If your Backup of your boot sector is valid (OK) and you were able to list your data, you can use Backup BS.
"Backup BS" copies your backup of your boot sector over your boot sector.
Your boot sector should be repaired.

If your boot sector and its backup are BAD;
Highlight Rebuild BS and hit Enter.
Rebuild your BS will be in progress.
Normally, it takes some minutes.
If it's finished, please post the infos or upload a screen.
If you see a menu List, please highlight it and press enter.
Please let me know, do you see your data or an error message.
To get back to the previous screen, easily press q for Quit.
Similar example has been here;
http://forum.cgsecurity.org/phpBB3/part ... h-t14.html
Infos about Dell Computer (especially about the partition order) here;
http://forum.cgsecurity.org/phpBB3/post ... dell#p2580
You probably won't boot from your "Recovery" partition either, that's why it should only be primary.

Infos will follow.

Fiona

louiebh
Posts: 17
Joined: 12 Jul 2012, 04:08

Re: HDD Corrupted

#9 Post by louiebh »

theAntiBob wrote:you may want to review the log file for the partition manager you were using to perfom these operations.
this should tell you how far along the operations were and in what order they were being performed before losing connection to the device.
I did a stupid and accidentally uninstalled the partition manager by updating it with a newer version when i tried to follow a different tutorial which has lost any chance of me finding the log :oops:

Fiona wrote:Your OS-partition has a message that NTFS or exFAT boot is invalid.
It means either your boot sector or file system is damaged.
Could you diagnose your boot sector first?
Start TestDisk, confirm at create a log with enter and select your affected disk.
Confirm at partition table type with enter also
Don't confirm at Analyse but Advanced.
Confirm at Boot.
Please upload a screen.
Please check List and have a try to list your data.
If you can watch your data you can restore your boot sector.
If you receive an error message, please let me know.

If your Backup of your boot sector is valid (OK) and you were able to list your data, you can use Backup BS.
"Backup BS" copies your backup of your boot sector over your boot sector.
Your boot sector should be repaired.

If your boot sector and its backup are BAD;
Highlight Rebuild BS and hit Enter.
Rebuild your BS will be in progress.
Normally, it takes some minutes.
If it's finished, please post the infos or upload a screen.
If you see a menu List, please highlight it and press enter.
Please let me know, do you see your data or an error message.
To get back to the previous screen, easily press q for Quit.
Similar example has been here;
http://forum.cgsecurity.org/phpBB3/part ... h-t14.html
Infos about Dell Computer (especially about the partition order) here;
http://forum.cgsecurity.org/phpBB3/post ... dell#p2580
You probably won't boot from your "Recovery" partition either, that's why it should only be primary.

Infos will follow.

Fiona
Im going to try this right now and post results

Image

when i try to click list files for my corrupted drive it doesnt do anything but its fine for the other partitions

should i go ahead and rebuild the boot sector?

EDIT: so i went ahead and tried the rebuilt boot sector and it was going good for a round 5-10 minutes then it froze im not sure whether to stop it or let it run, my usb hdd indicates its not doing anything since the led is not flashing..should i leave it to run or?

Image

louiebh
Posts: 17
Joined: 12 Jul 2012, 04:08

Re: HDD Corrupted

#10 Post by louiebh »

i used crystal disk info to get some more info to possibly help you direct me the correct way to recovery

Image

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