I have a Toshiba laptop hard drive (MQ02ABD075) connected to a Win 7 computer via a SATA/IDE to USB2.0 Adapter cable as it was no longer booting within the laptop.
I could not see any of the contents of the hard drive through Windows Explorer or Disk Manager (however I could see the disk as Drive F). After searching through forums, I found the reference to TestDisk to view disk contents, so I downloaded.
When I first used TestDisk to view the hard drive's contents, it identified the hard disk correctly as Drive F with a capacity of 750GB [Unfortunately, I chose not to create a log - big mistake#1] with a Partition Type of "Intel/PC".
Following the TestDisk Step by Step Guide, I then chose to "Analyse" the disk and it resulted in listing 3 partitions (even though the list did not actually say Partition 1, Partition 2 etc).
The first (the smallest) was listed with an asterick showing it was bootable - a list of the files showed boot folder etc, so appeared OK (from this novice's perspective)
The second (the largest) was listed with a "P" showing it as primary - a list of files showed what looked like my disk contents, so I was ecstatic thinking I was on the right track.
The third was also listed with a "P" showing as primary - a list of files showed also a boot folder and I think a recovery folder, so wasn't quite sure what this was for.
Since the partitions did not list as Partition 1, Partition 2 and Partition 3 respectively, I thought I would have to WRITE the partition table and then reboot [big mistake#2].
After rebooting, I ran TestDisk again and then found that the three "partitions" now showed up as three separate drive letters F, G & H (see attachment of Disk Management Image). Now when I run TestDrive on each of the three drives, the Partition Type comes up as "None" and Analysis comes back with errors.
Q1 - How can I get my drive back to the original state before I saved the Partition Table?
Q2 - If I'm fortunate enough to get this back, what do I do to make my hard drive bootable again since all the files appear to be there?
Would REALLY APPRECIATE assistance !!



Thank you,
Just a Mum (trying to get my data back)