Windows 7: Regain a lost drive using Test Disk - An Illustrated Guide

I have a Samsung SP3 1TB which suddenly showed up as unallocated. I had many important files on it and I was worried sick. Followed your guide and I got all my files back. I'm very very happy I found this site. Thanks!!!!

It's a great tutorial (guide), mintec68. Glad to hear you're intact and all fixed up!

Great!! Make it a real tutorial on sevenforums!

People might find it simpler to use the wizard in Minitool's Partition Wizard which is free for home use. How to perform Partition Recovery with partition magic? Partition Wizard Partition Recovery Video Help.

^No doubt that MiniTools Partition Wizard can do partition recovery but I am skeptical about it when it comes to dealing with a drive that has turned RAW.

When I check their website, it documents only three situations of partition loss that it can deal with 1. No drive letter 2. corrupted MBR 3.inadvertent partition deletions by the user. No mention about RAW. I am still keeping my eyes open to see that in practice.

Now a user-experience. Time: March 2012 - not long ago. A data drive. He moves a small data partition ahead of the free space using MiniTools, planning to expand it later in Windows Disk Management. Everything goes well and MT completes the move successfully and also shows it so. User boots into Windows 7 and Disk Management shows his whole disk has turned RAW. So do all other partitioning tools he checks with - except MT which says everything is right.

Now what to do with the RAW drive? He uses TestDisk to detect the partitions and write the partition table. He is back in business expanding the moved partition with Disk Management.

No, I am not telling a story. I have it documented in my library.

I don't know about RAW disks either. I've not heard of any recent problems with PW. I know there were problems a few releases ago.

A RAW partition has no real file system on it. It is read and written to by a database software like ORACLE for example and bypassing the operating IO-system. So it's not NTFS, HPFS,FAT etc.

But it also can happen by accident for example if partition table doesn't point to real first sector of partition. Solution is simple. Delete the partition and recover it afterwards.

Partition wizard and all other recovery tools accept RAW parititions as quite normal! Because you can have them on purpose

Lemme check whether I got it right.

When an HDD or pendrive turns RAW ( by accident as in most cases) then the simple solution ( as suggested by you) is:

1. Run MT Partition Wizard and delete the RAW partition.

2. Use the Partition Recovery Wizard in it and recover the partition/data.

Is that correct?

Correct

Thanks Kaktussoft, that's useful to know.