Background:
120GiB SSD C:
1TiB Programs&Documents HDD E:
2TiB Media HDD F: (failed), with pagefile.
Windows 7 64 bit.
Computer was working just fine a few days back, then packed it up and brought it home from uni. Upon powerup back home, took 4-5 minutes to go from the initial Windows splash to login (typically <30s). Upon login, F: was unresponsive in My Computer and a notice popped up saying my pagefile location was absent, so the pagefile had been temporarily relocated to C:. Opening Disk Management, I could see the physical drive listed there as RAW format. I then loaded up a free utility (iCare Data Recovery) to scan the drive, and it appears that at least the majority of the files are still present and seemingly untouched.
On a friend's suggestion, I then tried TestDisk. Using the basic analysis, it also shows primary (sole) partition, and that the file contents appear intact - but I then realised that it wasn't detecting the "Microsoft Reserved" partitions that it did on my functional E: drive. I followed your TestDisk basic guide first, and following the Write and reboot phase there was almost no change - apart from the time from Windows splash to login was back to normal, and Disk Management displays a 129mb Unallocated block at the start of the physical volume, but no other change.
I then checked the Advanced->Boot options for the drive, and the Primary and Backup boot sectors are apparently OK and identical. I've also run a chkdsk with results that I'm not able to interpret:
Code: Select all
C:\Windows\system32>chkdsk /f F:
The type of the file system is NTFS.
Volume label is Media & Backup.
CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 3)...
213248 file records processed.
File verification completed.
74 large file records processed.
0 bad file records processed.
0 EA records processed.
0 reparse records processed.
CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 3)...
224972 index entries processed.
Index verification completed.
0 unindexed files scanned.
0 unindexed files recovered.
CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors (stage 3 of 3)...
213248 file SDs/SIDs processed.
Security descriptor verification completed.
5863 data files processed.
CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal...
99 percent complete. (331776 of 36534912 USN bytes processed)
Unable to read the Usn Journal $J data stream.
... the thought of ripping all my hundreds of CDs and DVDs again is horrific