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I'll try to be succinct. Two weeks ago, my onboard C drive died. Got a new hdd and reinstalled my Win 7 home 64 bit OS. Good so far. I have 2 external hdds, a Seagate 1TB FreeAgent (F) and a 3TB Seagate Expansion (G). Everything fine with F, but Windows refuses to read anything on G. Made some attempts and first found "Corrupt NTFS boot sector". More turned up that G's file system changed to RAW after the reinstall. I bought a new 4TB external (H), but EVERY attempt to transfer my files (nothing but .mp3, .gif, and .jpg) has failed. I tried iCare, Recuva, DriveImage, but no go. Then I found TestDisk and ran it. I reached the partition (there's only one)data screen and got >* HPFS - NTFS 0 32 33 45600, etc and Structure Ok. but I can't change back from RAW. Ran CHKDSK /F G: and got "The type of the file system is RAW. CHKDSK is not available for RAW drives." (I even tried the GNU ddrescue route but couldn't get past the .tar.tar compression one way or the .tar.lz and inability to get lzip to run the other.)

I know the files are still there. My Start:Computer screen shows G: 1.74 TB free of 2.72 TB. There are no system or program files, but as I have thousands of music and image files, transferring them without their existing file names would be an extreme and probably useless solution. There are 8 years worth of collected music files and every remaining copy of scanned family/childhood pictures there. I just want to move them! I don't even care about the old hdd.

I know I should have done an external/online backup. I screwed up there. I have already found a company for that, but don't want to until I get G back due to a one-time ok massive bandwidth overage from my cable internet company.

Help.

Run TestDisk, Advanced, Boot, RebuildBS, List. If you can see your files, choose Write, confirm, Quit, restart your computer and try again a "chkdsk /f"

Run TestDisk, Advanced, Boot, RebuildBS, List. If you can see your files, choose Write, confirm, Quit, restart your computer and try again a "chkdsk /f"

Thanks for accepting this problem.

In Start:Computer screen I have "Seagate Expansion Drive (G:) 1.74 TB free of 2.72 TB"

Here's what has happened so far:
[Create] <select and enter>
"Drive G: - 3000 GB/2794 GiB - Seagate Expansion Desk"
[Proceed] <enter>
[Intel] <select and enter>
"Drive G: - 3000 GB/2794 GiB - Seagate Expansion Desk
5860516752 sectors - sector size=512"
[Advanced] <select and enter>
"Drive G: - 3000 GB/2794 GiB - CHS 1565549456 1 1
No partition available"

[Return to main menu]
[Analyze] <select and enter>

"Drive G: 3000 GB/2794 GiB - CHS 1565549456 1 1
Analyze sector XXXXX/1565549455: XX%"
Then, one after another: "Read error at XXXXX//0/1 (lba=XXXXX)"

It got as far as "Analyze sector 303104000/1565549455: 01%
Read error at 303103999/0/1 (lba=303103999)" and stopped.

This is where I am.

New development.

I didn't close the TestDisk window after the previous post. I just went back and saw this:

"Drive G: - 3000 GB/2794 GiB - CHS 1565549456 1 1
Partition Start End Size in sectors"

At bottom of screen:

"Keys A: add partition, L: load backup, Enter: to continue'

Select the PhysicalDrive instead of G:.
As written previously, use the Advanced menu, not Analyze.

Okay, tried again with following results:

Ran Advanced, Boot, and RebuildBS:

Disk /dev/sdb - 3000 GB/2794 GiB - CHS 45600 255 63
Partition Start End Size in sectors
1 P HPFS - NTFS 0 32 33 45600 41 59 732564594 [Seagate Expansion Drive]

filesystem size 732564594 732464594
sectors_per_cluster 1 1
mft_lcn 786432 786432
mftmirr_lcn 0 2
clusters_per_mft_record 1 1
clusters_per_index_record 1 1
Extrapolated boot sector and current boot sector are different

[ Dump ] [ List ] [ Write ] ] Quit ]
I entered [ List ] and got:

1 P HPFS - NTFS 0 32 33 45600 41 59 732564594 [Seagate Expansion Drive]

Can't open filesystem. Filesystem seems damaged.

>[Quit]
Entering returns me to the previous page.

My external HDD (Seagate 1TB) failed recently and I formatted the drive and created a new partition using Ubuntu. Now when inserting the Drive in Windows, the drive's File System is RAW and cannot change. I understand that the drive is formatted and the data cannot be recovered, but how do I convert it to NTFS again and get it back to working using cgsecurity.

Thank you.

mabiky, reformat again your disk. But if there are bad sectors / IO errors / CRC errors, get a new disk instead.

Yes it says I/O device errors. So the disk cannot be recovered again?