Hard Drive Partition gone

NomNom

NomNom

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Need help here

My dad booted up his Pc and the partition on the hard drive is gone.

It's a 80GB Seagate 7200.10 Barracuda, I have connected it to my Pc and in Disk Management it shows that the hard drive doesn't have a partition.

I am attempting to run a data recovery program now but it's only picked up a FAT 32 partition and not the NTFS one that I know it was using.

So the hard drive is working just the partition has disappeared.

I need to get the files from it, what are my options?
 
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Download Hiren's Boot CD - lots of tools to help you to attempt a rescue including one that will 'brute force' search for data files.

BTW, that must be one OLD hard drive - 80gig - jeez - miracle it still spins up
 
Well if the files are important then quit messing with it & message southbit. If not then try a different tool...I've had solid luck with Getdataback for NTFS.

Also, if the partition info is shot then obviously it won't be able to "pick it up".

Even without the partition table you can still pull data. e.g. I was once asked to pull data off someones HDD with a partition table that was shot to sht. Dumped the entire HDD as a raw image, wrote an app that detects unique markers for beginnings & endings of common files (.doc .xls .jpg etc). I was actually kinda surprised how well that worked...like 80% of the files generated by my tool were readable files.:wtf:
 
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AfricanTech said:
Download Hiren's Boot CD - lots of tools to help you to attempt a rescue including one that will 'brute force' search for data files.

BTW, that must be one OLD hard drive - 80gig - jeez - miracle it still spins up
Click to expand...

Cool thanks I've got Hirens, will give my recovery programs a try though before, yeah the hard drive is pretty old.

HavocXphere said:
Well if the files are important then quit messing with it & message southbit. If not then try a different tool...I've had solid luck with Getdataback for NTFS.
Click to expand...

Not enough to warrant the cost, yeah I'm trying it now, the NTFS one basically just told me if can't find any partitions, I'm giving the FAT one a try now.

fat.jpg
 
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Testdisk under Linux or the Windows version worked twice for me in last week.

Edit:
It is free.
 
NomNom said:
the NTFS one basically just told me if can't find any partitions, I'm giving the FAT one a try now.
Click to expand...
Its been a while, but FAT tool on NTFS will def not fly.

There are multiple recover options though....pretty sure there was one that basically picks through the entire hdds looking for fragments. NB takes a f load of time...think 48 hrs. And thats not a 3TB drive.

If you can try and image it...flakey hdds are usually...well flakey, so its a good idea to run an imaging tool against it one shot & then try the various tools against the image. Think you'll need a linux tool to create the image though. This also gets around the long delays when a hdd can't read a sector.

Is it grinding?

Also see edit above.
 
RoMark said:
Testdisk under Linux or the Windows version worked twice for me in last week.

Edit:
It is free.
Click to expand...

I've read this: http://www.techsupportforum.com/for...rtition-or-files-in-your-computer-194492.html

I'm a little worried about trying to write a new partition, I'm worried that the files will be lost if I do so.

HavocXphere said:
Its been a while, but FAT tool on NTFS will def not fly.

There are multiple recover options though....pretty sure there was one that basically picks through the entire hdds looking for fragments. NB takes a f load of time...think 48 hrs. And thats not a 3TB drive.

If you can try and image it...flakey hdds are usually...well flakey, so its a good idea to run an imaging tool against it one shot & then try the various tools against the image. Think you'll need a linux tool to create the image though. This also gets around the long delays when a hdd can't read a sector.

Is it grinding?

Also see edit above.
Click to expand...

Cool thanks!, no it isn't making any noises sounds like a brand new drive.


Sadly the scan for a FAT partition ended in a dead end, nothing was shown.

Here's what the NTFS program said:

ntfs.jpg
 
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NomNom said:
I'm a little worried about trying to write a new partition, I'm worried that the files will be lost if I do so.
Click to expand...
No def don't write anything to the drive.

Also...keep the PC running until you figure out what to do. Flakey harddrive and powering down & up is bad news.
 
HavocXphere said:
No def don't write anything to the drive.

Also...keep the PC running until you figure out what to do. Flakey harddrive and powering down & up is bad news.
Click to expand...

Agreed, I have the hard drive connected to my Pc via an enclosure.

Updated news on the GetDataBack above.

Going to try Recuva, then Hirens.

Scratch Recuva, it needs me to point it to the hard drive.

RoMark said:
Choose the option to do a deep scan. It will recover the files and the complete partition.
Click to expand...

Ok will give it a try now.
 
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NomNom said:
I've read this: http://www.techsupportforum.com/for...rtition-or-files-in-your-computer-194492.html

I'm a little worried about trying to write a new partition, I'm worried that the files will be lost if I do so.
Click to expand...

Before you do ANYTHING with that drive create a image file of it with GNU Ddrescue mount the image file and work on it. Leave the drive in the drawer where you can't stuff it up. Use testdisk on the image file to recover the partition.

Useful to have a extra copy of the image file that you don't and whenever you wanna try something new you just copy that and work on the new copy if that makes any sense.

EDIT:
/remind self to refresh pages before posting...
 
Glad it worked - maybe consider hooking up your dad with a proper backup solution.

Or alternatively, get him to work in a dropbox folder. Technically not a backup tool, but the (limited) ability to recover old versions of files mitigates the sync vs backup problem.

See
https://www.dropbox.com/help/11/en

Alternatively you could go with something like BitTorrent Sync, but you'd lose the past version angle. I think you might be able to fix that with a shadow copy, but haven't looked into that angle.
 
HavocXphere said:
Glad it worked - maybe consider hooking up your dad with a proper backup solution.

Or alternatively, get him to work in a dropbox folder. Technically not a backup tool, but the (limited) ability to recover old versions of files mitigates the sync vs backup problem.

See
https://www.dropbox.com/help/11/en

Alternatively you could go with something like BitTorrent Sync, but you'd lose the past version angle. I think you might be able to fix that with a shadow copy, but haven't looked into that angle.
Click to expand...

Thanks will look into this.
 
I only believe in two tools, tried and tested.

"Recover My Files" and "GetDataBack for NTFS"
 
TestDisk +100000000, free saved my bacon more than once prob 10 times so far. Well not my bacon :)
 
Guys, you mustn't forget DMDE. In most cases it can find your files where other tools require full surface scan. I can be critical if you want only few files but drive is unstable and deteriorating quick.
 
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