How to repair Corrupted Partition?

Graff · 30 Nov 2012

My 3Tb HDD recently started acting up. I use SSDs in a RAID0 to boot with and pretty much everything else, including desktop, downloads, documents, etc. are redirected to the HDD. It started with missing icons for shortcuts and then folders became inaccessible with an error message of "The file directory is corrupted or unreadable." The folders, that contained plenty of files, were reporting 0 content and more folders started to become affected.

I restarted my computer hoping it was a temporary glitch but now windows is telling me the drive needs to be formatted. Disk Management reports the drive to be operational with 2794.52 GB RAW and Healthy (Primary Partition). I booted linux from a USB stick and was unable to mount the drive. Kaspersky Rescue Disk simply doesn't recognize the drive. Possibly the oddest thing, though, is that EaseUS Data Recovery software is reporting only about 770GBs for the partition. Whats strange about it is that's right around the amount of free space that was on the drive.

I haven't run a CHKDSK or checked for bad sectors yet because I'm hoping to try to recover the files if possible. I have backups of the important files but there's a huge amount of data that isn't backed up that I'd at least like to try to get to before reformatting or doing something else that will ruin any chance of recovery

Anyone have any suggestions on how to "repair" the partition or another way to access the drive? Or... if I do reformat will I still be able to use something like Recuva to recover the data?

Edit: I should add that I'm broke... so anything asking for a tank or two of gas is kind of useless.

marsmimar · 01 Dec 2012

Hello Graff and welcome to Seven Forums.

Couple of things that can help diagnose/fix this issue. Please post a maximized screenshot of Disk Management.

How To Access Disk Management in Windows 7

Screenshots and Files - Upload and Post in Seven Forums

It would also help if you posted your system specs. At the top of any forum page click on "User CP" and then in the left column click "Edit System Spec".

There's a free utility called MiniTool Partition Wizard. It has a partition recovery option that may help.

Partition Recovery

Graff · 01 Dec 2012

Hi, done and done! Thanks for the reply, I've been using this forum's archives for years as a reference for a lot of things and finally had something specific enough that I finally figured I could use some help on.

I've tried MiniTool and initially ran a Surface Test that came back with no errors. I'm running the Partitoin Recovery Wizard detailed in the link you listed as well but I'm a bit curious as to why even this program is only seeing 746.52 GB.

I googled it really quick and found it to be a pretty "magic" number rather than simply the assumed, previous unused space. It seems that a lot of 3TB drives display 746.52 GB when the drive isn't being utilized with a 4K sector size. I remember encountering the problem when I first got the drive but after converting it to a GPT partition it didn't have any problems.

Now, the drive still displays as GPT in Disk Manager and in Minitool, but Minitool is also listing the Starting LBA as 2048. I'm not familiar with what the Starting LBA represents, but is it at all representative of the sector size? And if so, is it possible that something has fiddled with this to "break" the partition?

marsmimar · 01 Dec 2012

These articles may help to explain things in greater detail.

Taming Monster Disk Drives: 3 TB and Beyond! – @SFoskett – Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat

3 TB drives and Windows, practical test - BeHardware

Graff · 01 Dec 2012

Hmmm... could it be as simple as my motherboard deactivating the UEFI Boot? I'll have to double and triple check everything in my BIOS when this MiniTool scan finishes.

Thanks for the links btw! I somewhat understood most of it already from when I was first slamming my head against the wall to get the entire 3TB to work. But those articles did clarify a few things.

marsmimar · 01 Dec 2012

I hear ya about slamming your head against the wall.

I have several permanent flat spots on my head.

Graff · 01 Dec 2012

I can't find anything relevant in my BIOS or boot priority to the UEFI boot. Because my system drive is a RAID0 SSD configuration I'm having to boot in RAID protocol. UEFI is an option but nothing has been changed recently regardless.

MiniTool didn't provide much help either. Its still trying to give me the 746.52 GBs without a File System so its essentially in an unformatted and inaccessible state. I think I'm just going to try to do a quick format on the drive and attempt to recover what I can with Recuva.

Graff · 01 Dec 2012

Well I was actually able to locate a massive amount of files but with 2TB+ of data it would take me month to sift through it all. I got a few important files but theres not much thats worth the time to track down in the mess of things.

Anyways, it seems like the drive is still 100% functional. Any thoughts on why the partition would have gone poof like that? And is there a way to backup my partition table so that it can be recovered later without destroying any files or folders?