GUID Partition Table & MBR Mistake

Koda239 said:

And for all parties, I don't need the drive in working order,
I just need to be able to pull the small bit of data/documents off the two partitions I noted.
Then, after I can retrieve my data... I'll be glad to format the entire thing.

Dipping my toes in again.

I think Koda makes an important point above.

You have two of the best follks working with you, I'm out of the pool again.

Bill

edit: It's not the boot drive.

The disadvantage with Partition Recovery Wizard is that one can only explore and see the files, cannot access it unless the partition table is rewritten. The point you have brought is a valid one but I would tend to think the last written ones will be in order. In this case we have only selected the partitions known in the last boot state which the OP also concurs. (Right now it is not the boot drive and the OP is not interested in making it bootable again but only recover the data in it- not system files.) It will only be the previous ones that had been overwritten by the later that would appear corrupted if any part of it is still left over and shows up.

The advantage with Test Disk is that if one can see the folders/files in the partitions shown and selected , one can straight away copy those to another drive even without rewriting the partition table. The OP will have a choice to select only the files/folders he wants and copy them. Again if some files are corrupted nothing can be done about it.

So, IMO, the OP should go ahead and rewrite the partition table pertaining to those selected partitions which all add up to the full capacity of the drive and last known state. If still the drive is not accessible, he should get on to Test Disk. Rewritng the partition table is only an operation done in Sector 0, and it in no way affects the data in the partitions.

I don't think one can find a similar case with so many past history where one has dealt with it and succeeded.

So there are only two options.

1.Bite the bullet, let PW write the partition table with the three selected partitions and see whether the drive becomes accessible. Check in PW and assign drive letters if those do not have one. If accessible - no guarantee anyway, we can only hope for the best - good. If some files are corrupt, that had already happened and so nothing to cry about.

2. Leave it as it is, get on to TestDisk. I am sure it will also show the same partitions, he can select the desired partitions, see the files and copy the files to another drive. The scanning will take a lot of time. He has to plugin the destination drive before running TestDisk so that it is recognised when it is run and ready to host the files. ( The OP had already tried TestDisk. I don't know what happened. Most probably he aborted it since it was taking a long time.) Again whether the files are good or corrupted we will know only after copying all the desired files.

Either way, the process itself is not going to corrupt the files.

So folks, a decision is upto you. I am going to bed now. :)

I am back at my desk and will peep in once in a while. I see the OP online and I would like to hear what happened when he ran TestDisk as indicated by him in his post #1.

EDIT: I have made some slight changes (shown in italics) to the previous post, amplifying it. Keep us posted on what you are doing and not to hesitate to call for help even if you have a slightest doubt in the procedures. Especially TestDisk has to be handled with caution without any wrong move.

There is good chance of success with PW partition recovery.

Worth running a data recovery program first, just in case.

Unless you want to shell out seventy bucks for a paid version, there are some good free ones to try. TestDisk has already been suggested, but is not especially easy to use.

Puran seems effective, as I recently discovered Data Recovery Puran works Great

When you selected the three out of the whopping 32 partitions shown by Partition Wizard as constituting the last boot state of the HDD and were able to see all your files, I commented in my post#30 that this thread is coming to a close soon.:) For at that stage I was confident that the data was all there and can be recovered one way or the other TestDisk if not PW.

I am glad my prophecy came true and you did a great job.
Now what?

If you are happy and sure that all your data has been recovered, complete the Partition Recovery Wizard by selecting the three partitions and Apply the changes. Give the partitions a drive letter each ( if those don't have one) and see whether you are able to access the data in that HDD itself. Let us see whether PW also could succeed in this not-so-normal case. We learn quite a lot from user experiences and I wouldn't let that chance go.:)

After you format and partition the drive and start putting it to use, save the MBR (sector 0) and also the VBRs with Bootice and save to another location.. Apart from the MBR code sector 0 also contains the partition table. In case the partition table gets corrupted and your drive turns RAW, using the same Bootice restore sector 0 with the backup. And in most cases, you will be instantly back in action without going through the cumbersome data recovery process.

If you partition it as a GPT drive, save sector 0, 1,and 2 plus all the VBR sectors shown in the partition by Bootice.



I thank greg, Britton30 and Slartybart for their involvement, contributions and discussions in this thread. SIW2 brought in a new puran file recovery software. I read some of the reviews and it has been good. May be we will try it in some new cases in future.

All said and done, it will still remain a mystery why the HDD wanted to be initialised. If you had just taken it out of the old system and put it onto another system, it should have straight away worked. How did it lose the MBR code and the partition information?