Empty director after boot repair

Using TestDisk to repair the filesystem
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Neko
Posts: 4
Joined: 16 Sep 2021, 22:55

Empty director after boot repair

#1 Post by Neko »

Hi all
When trying to repair a memory stick, I made a mistake and probably deleted boot sector or MFT from my second hard drive. When restarted, disk was not mounted
1/ I recreated boot sector with test disk => disk was there but "access forbidden".
2/ I changed properties of drive : security / advanced ... and added my login as admin with full access on the system
3/ Now I can see all files that were at root of disk, all folders that were at root but that's all => all folders are empty :o

I know files are still there because the drive space occupied / Free is correct. I still have 400Go occupied.
I've tried some recovery tools but they see deleted files and not what I'm looking for (one software could find many files but without the file tree and sometimes names replaced by code)

note : chkdsk doesn't work, even at restart and MFT repair from testdisk says there's no error

Do you have any idea how I could recover files ?
Thanks in advance
Neko
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recuperation
Posts: 3036
Joined: 04 Jan 2019, 09:48
Location: Hannover, Deutschland (Germany, Allemagne)

Re: Empty director after boot repair

#2 Post by recuperation »

Just follow the standard procedures as document in

https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

and do not rewrite/recreate the boot sector without any reason.
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Neko
Posts: 4
Joined: 16 Sep 2021, 22:55

Re: Empty director after boot repair

#3 Post by Neko »

Hi
Thanks for the link. However, there are many procedures inside. Which one would you advice me to follow at first ?

Regards
Neko
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recuperation
Posts: 3036
Joined: 04 Jan 2019, 09:48
Location: Hannover, Deutschland (Germany, Allemagne)

Re: Empty director after boot repair

#4 Post by recuperation »

Neko wrote: 16 Sep 2021, 23:04 Hi all
When trying to repair a memory stick, I made a mistake and probably deleted boot sector or MFT from my second hard drive.
Please describe what you did and not what your actions caused in your opinion.
When restarted, disk was not mounted
Above you mentioned "MFT" which is a part of NTFS. Then you said "mounted". The first suggests that you might use a Microsoft operationg system the latter rather a unixoid one. What is your operating system?
1/ I recreated boot sector with test disk => disk was there but "access forbidden".
2/ I changed properties of drive : security / advanced ... and added my login as admin with full access on the system
3/ Now I can see
Where?! In your operating system or in Testdisk?!
all files that were at root of disk, all folders that were at root but that's all => all folders are empty :o

I know files are still there because the drive space occupied / Free is correct.I still have 400Go occupied.
I don't know what "files are still there" should mean. If you deleted your MFT and your drive was fragmented of course your files are there but you would most likely fail in extracting them.
I've tried some recovery tools but they see deleted files and not what I'm looking for (one software could find many files but without the file tree and sometimes names replaced by code)

note : chkdsk doesn't work, even at restart and MFT repair from testdisk says there's no error

Do you have any idea how I could recover files ?
Thanks in advance
Neko
Use Testdisk to search for partitions and try to list its contents using the "p"-key. If "quick search" fails use "deep search". Use Testdisk to navigate through your partitions and copy content. Check the recovered contents later on. If that fails use Photorec or any other commercial recovery software (as you described above).
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Neko
Posts: 4
Joined: 16 Sep 2021, 22:55

Re: Empty director after boot repair

#5 Post by Neko »

Hi
Thanks for your reply and sorry for not being clear in my explanation (which makes harder answering).
To give you a bit more information
* operating system : Windows. I used the word "mounted" to say that in file tree, my drive "D" did not appear, even if the disk is there physically
* Where I have issue : in my my operating system. After I could get back the "D" drive in my filetree, I had the described issue when clicking on "D"
* files still there : I didn't format of course. Every piece of file is there. When using a data recovery software, I can see all of them. I can even open them after recovering on external drive.
My concern is that the filetree is lost and not recovered by my software. This is annoying because of broken links and also for some software that I use (like Magix Video, which creates some intermediate file for work and I don't know where they were).
That's why I was wondering is something could be able to rebuilt filetree (based on hidden backup / data somewhere)
Regards
Neko
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