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I have an external USB 2TB Seagate drive that suddenly showed as just the generic "Local Disk" instead of usual volume name in XP and no files or folders show on that drive in Windows XP - it just says the drive is unreadable or corrupt.

I booted my PC from a 10.10 Ubuntu Live CD and everything on the drive is showing fine, right down to the volume name. I've therefore been able to backup all required information off the unit under Ubuntu before attempting any kind of fix, just in case.

When viewing the drive back on the PC in XP's Disk Management it shows as "Disk 1" and "Healthy" but without NTFS, it's correct type, after the disk size. On right-clicking and checking it shows as "RAW".

As I know all the files are still there by using a non-Windows device (ie the Ubuntu disc) and also if I use Analyze in TestDisk then P to show files it sees every file/folder perfectly. TestDisk even sees the volume label where Windows doesn't and recognises it as a single partition. The Drive shows as "Primary Bootable" correctly and the only error I can see is that the 'Backup' boot sector shows as unreadable. The original boot sector shows as OK.

How should I proceed from here? It just feels like I'm only a simple step away but can't reason out how to use TestDisk from here.

Thanks for any help.

Either your file system or boot sector is faulty.
To determine a faulty file system or boot sector you should diagnose your boot sector.
Would it be possible t upload a screen from TestDSisk / Advanced / Boot?

Fiona

Thanks for helping, Fiona.

Here's the screen as requested.

The partition is a little too big for the HD, it's why the backup boot sector at the end of the disk can't be read.
You should backup your data under Linux, delete the partition, recreate another one a little smaller, format the NTFS partition and recopy your files.

I wouldn't have spotted that myself!

Thanks for the application and the support - it's very much appreciated.