Partition Can't Be Recovered - Hard Disk Too Small - Partition Ends After Disk Limits

[blocky858]

Hello,

I have an older 1TB hard drive I have mostly been using to store photos and videos. I believe this drive used to be my old boot drive from years ago. Anyhow, storage was running a little low and there had been a small 500MB partition leftover from back when it was my boot drive. It had nothing of consequence on it, it was mostly empty. So, I deleted this old partition using Disk Management on Windows 11. After I deleted it, I extended the volume of my existing partition to encompass the now unallocated 500MB. I expected this to simply add these 500MB into my existing partition. Instead, this created a separate partition for the 500MB portion, and turned both of them into a simple volume as opposed to primary partition. I wasn't expecting this to happen, and decided to delete the new 500MB volume. This deleted both the 500MB volume AND the other volume which was almost 1TB in size.

After this occurred, I did not reformat the drive (the space still remains unallocated). I did not run any commands or anything like that. I looked up how to recover an accidentally deleted partition, and installed the 'EaseUS Partition Master' program, which ran but was not able to find my main 1TB partition. Instead, it only found the 500MB partition. I looked more online and found this program. I ran a quick scan which took a few hours. The program found both partitions, as well as a bunch of other small partitions that started deep into the drive, which I had no knowledge of, and I assume are from before I acquired this drive.

However, once the scan completed, I got an error saying that the hard disk was too small and that the partition could not be recovered. I looked up this error on the forums here and the existing advice seems to be to run a deeper scan. I did that, and again, the program found both partitions. However, I again got the same error. When I looked at the logs, it said that the partition ends after the disk limits. I looked that up as well and saw someone saying to look at the disk geometry and make sure that the program was using the correct specifications, which it was.

I am not sure where to go from here other than to make this post. I have pasted the log below. As far as I can tell, the program is detecting that the partition is larger than the CHS detected on the disk for whatever reason, despite the fact that as far as I can tell, the program has the correct geometry applied. However, I believe the logs also show that the size of the partition in terms of data is indeed smaller than the total amount available on the disk. Not sure how to fix this. Let me know if I can add any additional data to help. Not sure what else might be important to add. The disk was formatted as an MBR.

Here are the logs. It says it was cancelled because from what I read, if the partition is detected, I don't need to go through the entire scan. Also, I had already run the scan once but for some reason it did not make the log text file. I will run another deeper scan and post the results here when it is completed.

Thank you in advance.

write_mbr_i386: starting...
write_all_log_i386: starting...
No extended partition

Analyse Disk \\.\PhysicalDrive0 - 1000 GB / 931 GiB - CHS 121601 255 63
Current partition structure:
No partition is bootable

search_part()
Disk \\.\PhysicalDrive0 - 1000 GB / 931 GiB - CHS 121601 255 63
NTFS at 0/32/33
filesystem size 1021952
sectors_per_cluster 8
mft_lcn 42581
mftmirr_lcn 2
clusters_per_mft_record -10
clusters_per_index_record 1
HPFS - NTFS 0 32 33 63 188 61 1021952 [System]
NTFS, blocksize=4096, 523 MB / 499 MiB
NTFS at 63/188/62
filesystem size 1953517568
sectors_per_cluster 8
mft_lcn 786432
mftmirr_lcn 2
clusters_per_mft_record -10
clusters_per_index_record 1
HPFS - NTFS 63 188 62 121664 149 21 1953517568 [1TB WD HDD]
NTFS, blocksize=4096, 1000 GB / 931 GiB
This partition ends after the disk limits. (start=1024000, size=1953517568, end=1954541567, disk end=1953525168)
Search for partition aborted
Disk \\.\PhysicalDrive0 - 1000 GB / 931 GiB - CHS 121601 255 63
Check the hard disk size: HD jumper settings, BIOS detection...
The hard disk (1000 GB / 931 GiB) seems too small! (< 1000 GB / 931 GiB)
The following partition can't be recovered:
HPFS - NTFS 63 188 62 121664 149 21 1953517568 [1TB WD HDD]
NTFS, blocksize=4096, 1000 GB / 931 GiB

Results
* HPFS - NTFS 0 32 33 63 188 61 1021952 [System]
NTFS, blocksize=4096, 523 MB / 499 MiB

interface_write()

No partition found or selected for recovery

Don't know if this is needed, but here are my drive details from system info:

Description Disk drive
Manufacturer (Standard disk drives)
Model WDC WD10EARX-00N0YB0
Bytes/Sector 512
Media Loaded Yes
Media Type Fixed hard disk
Partitions 0
SCSI Bus 4
SCSI Logical Unit 0
SCSI Port 0
SCSI Target ID 0
Sectors/Track 63
Size 931.51 GB (1,000,202,273,280 bytes)
Total Cylinders 121,601
Total Sectors 1,953,520,065
Total Tracks 31,008,255
Tracks/Cylinder 255

[recuperation]

Please follow the advice given here:

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

When given a partition list, use the p-key ("list files") to look inside a partition.
For a succesful recovery you need to be able to look inside.
To recover data you must be able to access the partition without an error message AND you must find your content that you are missing.
If that fails use the deep search function to generate another partition list. Proceed the same way as described above.

If that fails use any third party recovery tool. If such a third party tool fails, use PhotoRec.

Do not modify any "disk geometry options". This geometry information is not used by a modern operating such as yours.
As for the "disk is too small" message, this probably appears because a partition in the partition table is pointing to a location behind the last sector of your disk.