Accidently changed bootable primary to primary

How to use TestDisk to recover lost partition
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playgamemy
Posts: 2
Joined: 14 Oct 2013, 11:25

Accidently changed bootable primary to primary

#1 Post by playgamemy »

Hi all,

First, I must admit I am an idiot in computer trying to fix the hard disk, so judge me if you want but please be helpful.

What happened is my sister's labtop haven't been use in 3 months, and one day she try to start it up and it doesn't work, and it keeps looping in windows recovery mode. A new hard disk was bought and the notebook is running now.

Now I try to recover the file from the hard disk, bought an usb external case for the hard disk. it recognize a device but no volume shown on "My Computer". Googled and used disk management and it showed up as unallocated space. As I believe by making simple space it will format the hard disk and unable to recover the data, I googled again. That's when I found TestDisk.

At this point whenever I run TestDisk, it found the disk straight away, did a quick search and 2 partition showed up: 480Gb as bootable primary and 11Gb as primary. I did a deep search on the 480Gb and it stalled at 522 cylinder. (Question 1: does it mean there is a physical fault with the hard disk?)
Force closed and restarted TestDisk. quick serach, and I thought changing the partition from bootable to primary could fix the problem as I thought it would make it a volume for storage and not bother to boot it, hence able to retrieve the data later (I know I may sounds like an idiot here, but Test Drive also indicate the structure as OK, so I thought it will be fine). Pressed write, reboot my computer.

Now 2 volumes actually showed up in My Computer but took like 3 minutes before it showed up, right click and chose format but it takes so long before the format windows comes up for the 11Gb partition and never comes up for the 480Gb, and I am too afraid to format it now as I don't know what it will do to it. For Test Drive, it also take so long to get to the point which I can press Quick Search, but again it stalled there.

so...I have following questions.
Q2: What is different between bootable primary and primary?
Q3: I was wondering if the 11Gb took so long, maybe the 420Gb take even longer? but by the time I wrote this much Test Drive still stalled at the point showing 2 partitions and quick "searching". Say I can finally get to the point rewrite the partition table, what should I really do to try to fix things?
(update: patience paid, I finally left the programe run for half an hour and i get to rewrite the partition table, so now everything should back to before I change for the first time)

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

Re: Accidently changed bootable primary to primary

#2 Post by Fiona »

I did a deep search on the 480Gb and it stalled at 522 cylinder. (Question 1: does it mean there is a physical fault with the hard disk?)
Did you receive any read errors?
Please avoid to stress your disk.
In case you can check your disk status using CrystalDiskInfo;
http://crystalmark.info/software/Crysta ... dex-e.html
480Gb as bootable primary and 11Gb as primary.
Did you have a try to list your data?
If your partition is already found, you can stop the scan by pressing enter.
Please let me know, are you able to list your files by checking your affected partition and pressing p.

Fiona

playgamemy
Posts: 2
Joined: 14 Oct 2013, 11:25

Re: Accidently changed bootable primary to primary

#3 Post by playgamemy »

Fiona wrote: Did you receive any read errors?
Please avoid to stress your disk.
In case you can check your disk status using CrystalDiskInfo;
Now I do the deep search again with patience, I receive read error in a lot of cylinders beyond 522, will post a screen capture when I have time. I will download the software and try it out, thanks.
Did you have a try to list your data?
Yes, now I can list my data but when I get into the folder Documents & Settings, which presumably should have some files, I see nothing.

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