Does this indicate a problem with Windows Reserved Partition on secondary drive?

How to use TestDisk to recover lost partition
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Author
DonaldH
Posts: 1
Joined: 09 Oct 2021, 22:39

Does this indicate a problem with Windows Reserved Partition on secondary drive?

#1 Post by DonaldH »

TLDR: I messed up my hard drive, I used TestDisk and I believe I was able to fix it. Everything seems to be working correctly but there is an error ("No FAT, NTFS, ext2, JFS, Reiser, cramfs or XFS marker") reported on my second drive's Microsoft Reserved Partition. I'm not sure if this is normal or if it indicates a problem I should fix.

Here is the contents of a current testdisk.log:

Code: Select all

Sat Oct  9 14:24:48 2021
Command line: TestDisk

TestDisk 7.2-WIP, Data Recovery Utility, September 2021
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: 10:0:0, reiserfs lib: none, ewf lib: 20140608, curses lib: ncurses 6.1
disk_get_size_win32 IOCTL_DISK_GET_LENGTH_INFO(\\.\PhysicalDrive0)=4000787030016
disk_get_size_win32 IOCTL_DISK_GET_LENGTH_INFO(\\.\PhysicalDrive1)=256060514304
disk_get_size_win32 IOCTL_DISK_GET_LENGTH_INFO(\\.\C:)=255351507456
disk_get_size_win32 IOCTL_DISK_GET_LENGTH_INFO(\\.\D:)=4000650887168
filewin32_getfilesize(\\.\E:) GetFileSize err Incorrect function.

filewin32_setfilepointer(\\.\E:) SetFilePointer err Incorrect function.

Warning: can't get size for \\.\E:
disk_get_size_win32 IOCTL_DISK_GET_LENGTH_INFO(\\.\G:)=524288000
Hard disk list
Disk \\.\PhysicalDrive0 - 4000 GB / 3726 GiB - CHS 486401 255 63, sector size=512 - HGST HDS724040ALE640, S/N:PK1331PAJD4JJS, FW:MJAOA580
Disk \\.\PhysicalDrive1 - 256 GB / 238 GiB - CHS 31130 255 63, sector size=512 - Samsung SSD 840 PRO Series, S/N:S12RNEAD701008K, FW:DXM05B0Q
Drive G: - 524 MB / 500 MiB - CHS 16000 2 32, sector size=512

Partition table type (auto): EFI GPT
Disk \\.\PhysicalDrive0 - 4000 GB / 3726 GiB - HGST HDS724040ALE640
Partition table type: EFI GPT

Analyse Disk \\.\PhysicalDrive0 - 4000 GB / 3726 GiB - CHS 486401 255 63
hdr_size=92
hdr_lba_self=1
hdr_lba_alt=7814037167 (expected 7814037167)
hdr_lba_start=34
hdr_lba_end=7814037134
hdr_lba_table=2
hdr_entries=128
hdr_entsz=128
check_part_gpt failed for partition
 1 P MS Reserved                   34     262177     262144 [Microsoft reserved partition]
Current partition structure:
No FAT, NTFS, ext2, JFS, Reiser, cramfs or XFS marker
 1 P MS Reserved                   34     262177     262144 [Microsoft reserved partition]
 1 P MS Reserved                   34     262177     262144 [Microsoft reserved partition]
 2 P MS Data                   264192 7814035455 7813771264 [Basic data partition] [Frozen]
Backup partition structure
partition_save

search_part()
Disk \\.\PhysicalDrive0 - 4000 GB / 3726 GiB - CHS 486401 255 63
NTFS at 16/113/34
filesystem size           7813771264
sectors_per_cluster       8
mft_lcn                   786432
mftmirr_lcn               2
clusters_per_mft_record   -10
clusters_per_index_record 1
NTFS part_offset=135266304, part_size=4000650887168, sector_size=512
NTFS partition cannot be added (part_offset<part_size).
NTFS at 16/113/34
filesystem size           7813771264
sectors_per_cluster       8
mft_lcn                   786432
mftmirr_lcn               2
clusters_per_mft_record   -10
clusters_per_index_record 1
     MS Data                   264192 7814035455 7813771264 [Frozen]
     NTFS, blocksize=4096, 4000 GB / 3725 GiB
Search for partition aborted

Results
   P MS Data                   264192 7814035455 7813771264 [Frozen]
     NTFS, blocksize=4096, 4000 GB / 3725 GiB

interface_write()
 1 P MS Data                   264192 7814035455 7813771264 [Frozen]
simulate write!

TestDisk exited normally.
A little more detailed description of what happened: My computer currently has two physical drives:
- a 256GB SSD (C drive) which is the main/system drive with Windows 10 and frequently used programs
- a secondary 4TB drive (D drive) that is used to store photos, videos and all other programs

I am trying to upgrade the SSD to a 1TB SSD. I use IDrive for online backup and it has a utility that I've used to do this before so that's what I was trying to use. I went through the steps to create an image of the SSD, swap the drives and boot WinRE off a flash drive. After booting from the flash drive, the D drive became the C drive and the new blank SSD was the F drive. I was careless when I entered the command so instead of telling it to copy the image from C drive to the F drive, I accidentally entered a command to copy the image from the C drive to the C drive. It encountered errors immediately after starting and I realized what I had done. So I stopped it, swapped in my old SSD and restarted. At this point, my second drive was inaccessible and Windows said it needed to be formatted.

I searched, found TestDisk, after doing a scan, saw that the Boot sector was Bad but the Backup boot sector was OK. I was able to copy the Backup boot sector to the Boot sector and after restarting my PC everything seemed back to normal. I've been running it for over a week now and haven't noticed any issued with my files or programs installed on that drive. My only concern is that TestDisk reports "No FAT, NTFS, ext2, JFS, Reiser, cramfs or XFS marker" for the Microsoft Reserved Partition (MSR) on the second drive. (There is also a reserved partition on the SSD that doesn't report any errors.) Does that mean there is still a problem or is this normal with the MSR on a secondary drive? Various sources on the internet have conflicting information whether this partition is necessary or not.

recuperation
Posts: 2720
Joined: 04 Jan 2019, 09:48
Location: Hannover, Deutschland (Germany, Allemagne)

Re: Does this indicate a problem with Windows Reserved Partition on secondary drive?

#2 Post by recuperation »

DonaldH wrote: 09 Oct 2021, 23:59 TLDR: I messed up my hard drive, I used TestDisk and I believe I was able to fix it. Everything seems to be working correctly but there is an error ("No FAT, NTFS, ext2, JFS, Reiser, cramfs or XFS marker") reported on my second drive's Microsoft Reserved Partition.
Is your operating system reporting an error?
I'm not sure if this is normal or if it indicates a problem I should fix.
I don't have any system with a "Microsoft reserved partition" and can't tell you. Just run Testdisk on a known healthy system to answer the question what "normal" is.

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