windows 8 - What steps should I take to recover my data due to partition error?

06
2014-04
  • S Rahul Bose

    Specs :

    • HD : 3 TB external Samsung Hard-disk
    • OS : Win 8.1 64 Bit
    • SW : Paragon

    How it happened :

    • Applied a resize at end operation in Paragon on my 3 TB disk. I wanted the 3 TB to split to 2980 GB and 20 GB.
    • Paragon started applying. After about .5 hour, there was an I/O error. I did not ignore/force close. I cancelled using the button given by paragon.
    • Checked if External Drive was detected - No
    • Rebooted, checked again - not detected
    • Right clicked My Computer to check the status of disk - Windows sees it as an un-formatted 3 TB disk with 2300 GB and 700 GB. (I expected either 2980 GB and 20 GB or 3TB.)
    • Used Test Disk to make sure it can read the headers - It can

    My plan - Boot into Ubuntu using LIVE CD and see what Ubunutu sees. - If it cannot find the disk in proper structure, will download a recovery software and try.

    Request you to suggest what is the best way forward. Please help me.

    • Answers
  • S Rahul Bose

    Summary I used testdisk to get my data back. I analysed my disk, then I wrote the structure back to the disk. Windows found the MBR and I could see all my files.

    Details Drive was not detected because of corrupt MBR which Paragon did.


    • Related Question

    hard drive - recover partition after reinstall windows XP
  • Stan

    My OS was infected by trojan or virus and system files are corrupted. After tried to reinstall XP several time and failed, I took out the hard drive and prepare to back up files for a clean reinstall. Then found my data partition (D:) was empty except only a pagefile.sys, but looking into property, still can see 80% of disk space used (80GB).

    It seems the index or something was corrupted during rebooting "chkdsk" when doing recovery installation. I found the disk label has been changed and chkdsk was reindexing that partition. But it hang somewhere so I forced reboot the machine. Could anyone help me out how to fix this?

    PS: below is message from chkdsk: Stage(2 of 3) Correcting error in index $0 for files 25. Index verification completed. Error found. CHKDFK cannot continue in read-only mode.


    • Related Answers
  • Kelbizzle

    http://www.piriform.com/recuva Is a free tool made by the makers of CCleaner.

    It's worth a shot and certainly doesn't cost any money.

    ddrescue is another very powerful option but it's more gear toward linux professionals. It works wonders.

  • Area 51

    WinHex or the 'lite' variant Davory would be my tool of choice, state-of-the-art forensic utilities.

    you can run Davory over the drive and see if it is able to find your files. however, you will have to purchase a license in order to recover the files.

    Note: When you select the drive to scan (F9), choose the physical disk rather than the logical drive.