4TB Ext USB, NTFS became RAW, and fix
Posted: 06 Mar 2019, 00:26
I had a 4TB Seagate external USB data-only disk, and damaged my USB enclosure's PCB side connector (dual/wide ugly usb 3 type).
I bought a USB C connector based external enclosure, since I needed to buy a new enclosure anyway.
Disk attached to Win10 showed up as RAW 0bytes, but Win Disk Management showed 2TB disk.
google brought me to this tool testdisk, thankfully !
ran the Analyze-->Deep Search-->Saw all my files-->write partition table-->reboot
I could now list (p) my files through testdisk, so knew I had possibility of copying files away, but didnt want to do 2-3TB copying.
now Win10 could see 4TB second partition, but still RAW. First partition is tiny unused space.
went back to testdisk-->Advanced FS Utils-->Boot-->rebuild Boot Sector-->reboot
boot sector and copy, now both ok.
but disk still showing up as RAW, so still needs work.
went back to testdisk-->Advanced FS Utils-->Boot-->FIX MFT
gave error: main and backup MFT area corrupted.
found this article on NTFS fix on ubuntu, and ran
ntfsfix /dev/sdc2
This generated a MFT and backup MFT area.
I could now immediately mount ntfs on ubuntu, and see all my files !!
Now on Win10, disk was still showing as RAW.
I ran
chkdsk /f e:
rebooted twice as suggested by ntfsfix.
Disk is back to normal.
Thanks CG ! testdisk definitely had a big part in getting my partition table fixed.
This was done over 10 days, and unfortunately I did not keep logs, so cant go back and see why testdisk couldn't fix it all. But I got there eventually.
I bought a USB C connector based external enclosure, since I needed to buy a new enclosure anyway.
Disk attached to Win10 showed up as RAW 0bytes, but Win Disk Management showed 2TB disk.
google brought me to this tool testdisk, thankfully !
ran the Analyze-->Deep Search-->Saw all my files-->write partition table-->reboot
I could now list (p) my files through testdisk, so knew I had possibility of copying files away, but didnt want to do 2-3TB copying.
now Win10 could see 4TB second partition, but still RAW. First partition is tiny unused space.
went back to testdisk-->Advanced FS Utils-->Boot-->rebuild Boot Sector-->reboot
boot sector and copy, now both ok.
but disk still showing up as RAW, so still needs work.
went back to testdisk-->Advanced FS Utils-->Boot-->FIX MFT
gave error: main and backup MFT area corrupted.
found this article on NTFS fix on ubuntu, and ran
ntfsfix /dev/sdc2
This generated a MFT and backup MFT area.
I could now immediately mount ntfs on ubuntu, and see all my files !!
Now on Win10, disk was still showing as RAW.
I ran
chkdsk /f e:
rebooted twice as suggested by ntfsfix.
Disk is back to normal.
Thanks CG ! testdisk definitely had a big part in getting my partition table fixed.
This was done over 10 days, and unfortunately I did not keep logs, so cant go back and see why testdisk couldn't fix it all. But I got there eventually.