cgsecurity.org

So I've got a 4-HD RAID array in an external hard drive that has gone AWOL and Windows is warning me to format it.

I've run Active File Recovery against it and it's found an NTFS file system starting at sector 264196, and ending at Sector 23441766403. I do a QuickScan with that tool and it lists me the files I would expect to see. Hurray!

Now, I switch to TestDisk, and it finds a Partition starting and ending at the same sector. But when I hit "p" to list the files, none show up... This concerns me..

I'm following the instructions on this page: https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Step_By_Step

Should I still be able to go through the steps even though TestDisk doesn't list me those files?

Or is there something else I should resolve first?

Is this partition missing from the actual partition table ?
Only if it is the case, choose to rewrite the partition table.
To repair the filesystem, you can try the various things listed in https://www.cgsecurity.org/testdisk.pdf

Yeah I think Windows can't find the partition information, so it thinks it needs to be formatted.

TestDisk has found partition information and I'm given the option to add partition, load backup, change type, and list files.

I think I should be okay with loading the backup partition information, should I not? Apologies for being really tentative, I don't want to lose this data again.

Seems like every example I find people can see their files listed when they hit 'P', whereas I cannot, so I'm a little nervous with writing out the partition.

Here's what I see: