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Disk not readable! How to get Testdisk to work on my case?

Posted: 16 Dec 2013, 23:57
by yorkitecture
Hello cgsecurity.org forum,

I have been for more or less 3 weeks not being able to access my hard drive (Hitachi...750Gb...dunno much more about it :? ).

I work for long hours during the day and then only can access the internet on my workplace to take care of this when everyone else leaves, so the time I've dedicated to solve this problem has not been as much as I wanted to.


After a lot of tries and investigation (I read some topic of this forum as well), I came across this Teskdisk/Photorec possibility. I have them on Parted Magic (Linux) 3.5.6 (from a bootable CD which is one of the very few things my notebook can run.

So, I believe that these are my last options, so I'd like to use them right, I tried both Teskdisk and PhotoRec already but Testdisk usually stops at the 169th cylinder in the Quick Search (from 91200) and Photorec was running "well" (with some errors) but taking an estimated time of between 2500 and 5000h (no kidding!!!). I was reading some topics cause I found it strange and read it is (of course) not normal so I stopped it, especially after realizing that the folder structure and file names wouldn't be kept.

Anyways, I'd like to ask you, if possible, for some advice on this matter, cause I'm feeling kinda desperate and I sense these programs are very good and powerful but...you really need to know how to use them.

What I did on Testdisk was:

1st. Running it as root (I believe so: "sudo testdisk" in ROXTerm);
2nd. Simply selecting the harddrive (it was shown and measured correctly);
3rd. Select EFI (cause that is what Testdisk automatically detected;
4th. Analyse (cause I don't have a reason to do anything else than the standard procedure);

And 6 partitions are shown (and they all have a text between square brackets which I read was good) but there is a message saying "No FAT, NTFS, ext2, JFS, Reiser, cramfs or XFS marker" after the second partition (which is named as "Unknown" and another message saying "check_FAT: can't read FAT boot sector" and then the first message again after the 3rd partition (which shows up twice - I read it's not good!)

5th. Quick Search anyways

And this is where it gets stuck at the 169th cylinder "00%" (I tried waiting for over half an hour and it stays like that)

(I also have Testdisk and another recovery program on a USB stick and I have the possibility of removing the hardrive and plugging it into another computer with Windows 7 and try to run the programs from there, but I'd like to know your opinion on that first)

So...I know it is maybe tempting to tell me..."Man...if you want your data back, prepare yourself to pay a lot of money!"...but if any of you has any suggestions/advice that might help me in avoiding that, I would be the most grateful person in this world!

Thanks, and hopefully you'll see this and reply (it's my first post ever so I don't really know how this works)

Re: Disk not readable! How to get Testdisk to work on my cas

Posted: 17 Dec 2013, 11:42
by yorkitecture
ok I forgot to mention some details and then I needed the post to be approved so I can only do it now.

Partition n. 4 also shows up repeated, and partition n. 6 is also marked as "unknown".

I know maybe situations like mine were already taken care of hundreds of times, but I checked the forum and couldn't find exactly one that could have the solution for my case, maybe if you don't want to lose much time with me you can give me a link a post like that?

thanks again

Re: Disk not readable! How to get Testdisk to work on my cas

Posted: 17 Dec 2013, 15:27
by yorkitecture
ok just to say that I am redoing the scan and that after soome hours it moved pas cylinder 169!!!

"Yuuuuupi", cause now it's stuck at 170 and there is a message that goes

Read error at 169/245/44 (lba=2730463)

(Of course I won' post every new cylinder it finishes, but this way at least I know it is running...just awfully slow...)

Re: Disk not readable! How to get Testdisk to work on my cas

Posted: 19 Dec 2013, 18:06
by yorkitecture
Ok people I know my post may be boring...but I really need some help here!

The Quick search has been at 11% for over 30h! It is working, but it encounters problems in almost every cylinder, so it almost doesn't move!

I'm running it from Parted Magic so from a bootable Linux CD. Is there anyway I can make it faster? Change the configurations of the analysis? I definitely don't know enough about Testdisk to do that by myself. Also, as I said I have the same Testdisk 6.14 version in a USB stick and I have cables to connect my hard drive to another laptop, where I can theoretically run this version of Testdisk that I have. I read somewhere it gets maybe slower if it is run on Win or Mac since its best performance is in Linux, but I don't know.

Can you please, PLEASE, help me? I'm going to travel in two days and I really need to get my disk bootable or at least accessible enough to make a backup, since I haven't been able so far.

Re: Disk not readable! How to get Testdisk to work on my cas

Posted: 20 Dec 2013, 10:48
by yorkitecture
Ok...it's been almost 48h in 11%...

OF COURSE I'm stopping it...

It's also been 4 day since I first posted and I haven't received any response which makes mo wonder..."am I really on the right forum? did I read it wrong and this is not 'Testdisk and Photorec forum' but something else?

Enfin... :?:

Re: Disk not readable! How to get Testdisk to work on my cas

Posted: 20 Dec 2013, 20:56
by yorkitecture
hey as I said I would I stopped Testdisk on Parted magic, removed the Hitachi Harddrive from its enclosure and am now running Testdisk 6.14 from a Windows 7 notebook.

THis way, I can access a log file and maybe someone will answer me!...

So, analysis showed this, which seems quite the same as I got on Linux!

Analyse Disk \\.\PhysicalDrive2 - 750 GB / 698 GiB - CHS 91201 255 63
hdr_size=92
hdr_lba_self=1
hdr_lba_alt=1465149167 (expected 1465149167)
hdr_lba_start=34
hdr_lba_end=1465149134
hdr_lba_table=2
hdr_entries=128
hdr_entsz=128
check_part_gpt failed for partition
3 P MS Reserved 2459648 2721791 262144 [Microsoft reserved partition]
check_part_gpt failed for partition
4 P MS Data 2721792 588779519 586057728 [Basic data partition]
Current partition structure:
1 P EFI System 2048 616447 614400 [EFI system partition]
2 P Unknown 616448 2459647 1843200 [Basic data partition]
No FAT, NTFS, ext2, JFS, Reiser, cramfs or XFS marker
3 P MS Reserved 2459648 2721791 262144 [Microsoft reserved partition]
3 P MS Reserved 2459648 2721791 262144 [Microsoft reserved partition]
check_FAT: can't read FAT boot sector
No FAT, NTFS, ext2, JFS, Reiser, cramfs or XFS marker
4 P MS Data 2721792 588779519 586057728 [Basic data partition]
4 P MS Data 2721792 588779519 586057728 [Basic data partition]
5 P MS Data 588779520 1423183871 834404352 [Basic data partition]
6 P Unknown 1423183872 1465147391 41963520 [Basic data partition]



I'm now running Quick search now, lets see if it is somehow faster!