Recovery Partition - Hard Disk seems to small!

[Pheelix14]

So my friends External HDD stopped coming up in windows 7 and started saying unknown devices etc etc. So I pulled the HDD out of the enclosure and plugged it into my computer (SATA) to see what was going on. BIOS found the drive, booted into windows, checked my computer and it didn't come up. Checked Computer Managment and it wanted to initialize drive so I hit cancel. Ran Testdisk, did the analyze deepscan, found a partition but when it finished it said The Harddisk seems to small! << 2458 GB / 2289 Gib >>, Check the harddisk size: HD Jumpers settings, BIOS detection...

So its not letting me recover the partition because of this. I think something got messed up in the partition and the cylinder/head/sector numbers are messed up. I was going to add a new partition with the correct numbers but im not to sure what they should be set to.

I would like to try and get this drive working again with all the data on it if possible.

Near the end of the Deepscan


Results of the Deepscan



Log
Sun Mar 25 14:33:52 2012
Command line: TestDisk

TestDisk 6.14-WIP, Data Recovery Utility, March 2012
Christophe GRENIER <grenier@cgsecurity.org>
http://www.cgsecurity.org
OS: Windows 7 (7600) SP1
Compiler: GCC 4.6, Cygwin 1007.9
Compilation date: 2012-03-25T21:26:26
ext2fs lib: 1.41.8, ntfs lib: 10:0:0, reiserfs lib: 0.3.1-rc8, ewf lib: 20100226
disk_get_size_win32 IOCTL_DISK_GET_LENGTH_INFO(/dev/sda)=2000398934016
disk_get_size_win32 IOCTL_DISK_GET_LENGTH_INFO(/dev/sdb)=500107862016
disk_get_size_win32 IOCTL_DISK_GET_LENGTH_INFO(/dev/sdc)=500107862016
disk_get_size_win32 IOCTL_DISK_GET_LENGTH_INFO(\\.\PhysicalDrive0)=2000398934016
disk_get_size_win32 IOCTL_DISK_GET_LENGTH_INFO(\\.\PhysicalDrive1)=500107862016
disk_get_size_win32 IOCTL_DISK_GET_LENGTH_INFO(\\.\PhysicalDrive2)=500107862016
disk_get_size_win32 IOCTL_DISK_GET_LENGTH_INFO(\\.\C:)=500000882688
disk_get_size_win32 IOCTL_DISK_GET_LENGTH_INFO(\\.\D:)=4486856704
disk_get_size_win32 IOCTL_DISK_GET_LENGTH_INFO(\\.\E:)=500104691712
Hard disk list
Disk /dev/sda - 2000 GB / 1863 GiB - CHS 243201 255 63, sector size=512 - WDC WD20 EADS-11R6B1, S/N:WD-WCAVY2803441, FW:80.0
Disk /dev/sdb - 500 GB / 465 GiB - CHS 64601 240 63, sector size=512 - WDC WD50 01AALS-00L3B, S/N:WD-WCASY7108225, FW:01.0
Disk /dev/sdc - 500 GB / 465 GiB - CHS 64601 240 63, sector size=512 - WDC WD50 01AALS-00L3B, S/N:WD-WCASY7109602, FW:01.0
Drive D: - 4486 MB / 4279 MiB - CHS 1069 64 32, sector size=2048 - SONY DVD RW DRU-810A, FW:1.0f

Partition table type default to Intel
Disk /dev/sda - 2000 GB / 1863 GiB - WDC WD20 EADS-11R6B1
Partition table type: Intel

Analyse Disk /dev/sda - 2000 GB / 1863 GiB - CHS 243201 255 63
Current partition structure:

Partition sector doesn't have the endmark 0xAA55
Ask the user for vista mode
search_vista_part: 0

search_part()
Disk /dev/sda - 2000 GB / 1863 GiB - CHS 243201 255 63
BAD_RS LBA=4284259852 10385787
file_pread(4,1,buffer,4284259852(266682/214/41)) lseek err Invalid argument
check_part_i386 failed for partition type 07
HPFS - NTFS 266682 214 41 298893 89 48 517461848
This partition ends after the disk limits. (start=4284259852, size=517461848, end=506754403, disk end=3907029168)
Disk /dev/sda - 2000 GB / 1863 GiB - CHS 243201 255 63
Check the harddisk size: HD jumpers settings, BIOS detection...
The harddisk (2000 GB / 1863 GiB) seems too small! (< 2458 GB / 2289 GiB)
The following partition can't be recovered:
HPFS - NTFS 266682 214 41 298893 89 48 517461848

Results

interface_write()

No partition found or selected for recovery

search_part()
Disk /dev/sda - 2000 GB / 1863 GiB - CHS 243201 255 63
BAD_RS LBA=4284259852 10385787
file_pread(4,1,buffer,4284259852(266682/214/41)) lseek err Invalid argument
check_part_i386 failed for partition type 07
HPFS - NTFS 266682 214 41 298893 89 48 517461848
This partition ends after the disk limits. (start=4284259852, size=517461848, end=506754403, disk end=3907029168)
file_pread(4,2,buffer,3907039377(243201/243/4)) lseek err Invalid argument
file_pread(4,1,buffer,3907039377(243201/243/4)) lseek err Invalid argument
file_pread(4,2,buffer,3907039440(243201/244/4)) lseek err Invalid argument
file_pread(4,2,buffer,3907039503(243201/245/4)) lseek err Invalid argument
file_pread(4,1,buffer,3907040129(243201/254/63)) lseek err Invalid argument
file_pread(4,1,buffer,3907040130(243202/0/1)) lseek err Invalid argument
Disk /dev/sda - 2000 GB / 1863 GiB - CHS 243201 255 63
Check the harddisk size: HD jumpers settings, BIOS detection...
The harddisk (2000 GB / 1863 GiB) seems too small! (< 2458 GB / 2289 GiB)
The following partition can't be recovered:
HPFS - NTFS 266682 214 41 298893 89 48 517461848

[Fiona]

Would it be possible that your external disk is hardware encrypted?
Please, see that link below;
http://forum.cgsecurity.org/phpBB3/tryi ... -t200.html

[Pheelix14]

Ya it would seem that the HDD is encrypted. When its plugged in using the controller board it says unknown device, so I looks like I will have to buy a used controller board off of ebay and see if that works.

[xianp]

I had this problem recently, on a lot of different disks and was really amazed, and lost... (I'm close to 81...).
Found out that creating partitions with EASEUS Partition Master (3.0.2) was the source of he problem.
I first saved my datas, did a low level format (HDDLLFT by HDDGuru), created new partitions with the help of Win8 and tested with the help of TestDisk: problem was gone, on all affected drives !