No OS found. C:\ drive became RAW

I have a Lenovo Y560 laptop. I turned on my computer in the morning and the computer automatically went to the System Recovery Options. Everything was working fine the night before.

There was no operating system listed and the system restore point was from 2011. No OS was found. I used a bootable Windows 7 disc and went to the Repair screen. In startup repair, I ran it 5 straight times and it kept saying bad partition table. I tried the command prompt and was unable to do chkdsk cause the c:\ drive is raw. All my data is on the c:\ drive and my backup/restore point was on the d:\ drive.

I tried the bootable Peppermint option to try and salvage the data but I got mount error, so I was unable to click on my drive.

I tried the bootable partition wizard but it did not work. It automatically restarted my computer after I selected the resolution.

Using Hiren's Boot CD, I was able to boot into Mini Windows XP. On Disk Manager, the c:\ is not FAT32 or NTFS but just blank. I run Partition Wizard on the C:\ drive and I can explore one of the allocations and see all my files listed so I recover it and give it a new letter E:\. However, it states that the partition is 29 GB, when in fact it should be much larger. So on Partition Wizard it is showing at negative space usage. I cannot re-size or copy or re-allocate as I get error messages. On My Computer, the E:\ is unaccessible and windows asks if I want to format. I tried Peppermint again, but still mount issues.

I'm currently running the Lenovo Diagnostics.

Any ideas on how to at least salvage my data? I guess my next option is to see if the restore point is still accessible (I unallocated it to try and move my data onto that D:\ drive. I have recovered it after I was unable to copy over to the D:\ drive).

I'm not sure if I'm allowed to bump my own topic, but I haven't received any responses.

I went back to a Windows Repair and got the same messages as before. I went to do a system restore from the 2011 date but after clicking next, it says to select the drives to reformat - including the drive with all my data. So I cancelled it.

I read about TestDisk and PhotoRec. I see they are in Hiren's Boot CD. Should that be my next course of action. Will it wipe out the data by attempting TestDisk? I think I read that there's a limit on how many files it can recover? Or it can only recover photos?

Thanks

This thread should probably be in the Backup and Restore category. Resident expert there is "Jumanji". Maybe a moderator will move this.

I hesitate to handle a laptop especially when the system drive is involved.

Anyway, you said you ran Peppermint and got stuck. You can try Lucid Puppy. Hold on. I have to search and find one of my old posts which gives all details on how to create a Lucid Puppy pen drive.

So hold on till I come back. In the meanwhile do not try anything on your laptop. Suspend all operations.

OK here we go.

Download lupu-528.005.iso (132.6 MB) from http://puppylinux.org/main/Long-Term-Supported%20Puppy.htm#lucidpuppy

Create your bootable Lucid Puppy pendrive with this ISO using Rufus 2.1 (788KB) https://rufus.akeo.ie/ (All data on the pendrive will be lost when rufus formats the pendrive before writing the ISO and so backup any data on the pendrive elsewhere before running Rufus)

Plug in your destination drive with adequate space to copy files and boot your PC with this pendrive using the onetime boot menu. Check whether that faulty drive is shown and you can access it and see your data. If seen copy all data to the empty drive.

Guide on how to use Lucid Puppy :Go to the topic Recovering files from the non-bootable Internal Drive: in my thread
https://www.sevenforums.com/software/198909-lucid-puppy-way-recover-files-non-bootable-computer.html

NOTE: Whatever is stated before this particular heading explains how I made the drive inaccessible, created my Lucid puppy to try it. Your drive is already inaccessible and you are going to create your bootable pendrive with Rufus.. So give it a pass and go direct to the topic mentioned in bold letters.)

I hope you also have the bootable Partition Wizard. If yes we shall run it later.

I am out for dinner. So will be back only after another 3-4 hours.

Hi,

I booted on Lucid Puppy and mounted the corrupted drive and external hard drive. On the corrupted drive, I get a NTFS Warning "The ntfs-3g driver was unable to mount the NTFS partition......Failed to read last sector (946507183): Invalid argument......the inbuilt kernel NTFS driver has been used to moutn the partition read-only"

Thus when I try to copy over to my external hard drive, I get a cp: cannot create regular file...Read-only file system

Ok, this must be a Linux specific problem when dealing with a bad drive.. I have to perhaps research into this. I am just wondering what the last sector has to do (unless it is a GPT drive. Only GPT drives will have the GPT Header backup in there)

Now tell me whether you can see all the files, open those and read?

There is GParted/Parted Magic Partitioning program in Lucid puppy. Just run it and let me know the structure of the disk. How many partitions there and their capacity. If you can post a camera shot well and good. Otherwise describe in detail.

Also there is a screen capture program in it. You have to play around with it on how to capture and where to save it and find it. If you can capture the screen, save it (it will save in the RAM drive) and then move it to the external drive or even your Lucid Puppy drive, fine.Upload the screenshot. There is a browser also you can log into the forum and upload it.

Whether you are able to do this or not we shall move onto running Partition Wizard from a bootable pendrive.Download the latest bootable CD version Bootable Partition Manger | MiniTool Partition Wizard Bootable Edition and prepare your pendrive with Rufus.

Tomorrow we shall do it.( I was already dozing in the restaurant.)

Ok, I saw the full error message in the Lucid Puppy Forum. The error can mean "the partition table is corrupt (partition is smaller than NTFS),
or the NTFS boot sector is corrupt (NTFS size is not valid).

We shall try to tackle it tomorrow with Partition Wizard. If you can take camera shots and upload it will be easier to give appropriate instructions online .

Attached is the screenshot from Gparted. The data I wish to retrieve is in sda2. In read-only mode, some pictures I can view, but most say contains no data or have and exclamation mark on it and when I click, it says "File does not exist, or I can't access it".

I had tried the bootable Partition Wizard, but when I go to select the resolution, options 1 and 2 flash the Partition Wizard screen and then reboots. Options 3 and 4 lead me to a /bin/sh: can't access tty.

Using Hiren's Boot CD, I was able to use Mini Windows XP and from there I can access the Partition Wizard. Would that work as well in case I cannot get the bootable Partition Wizard again? I will attempt to run the bootable version now and provide updates.

I tried the Bootable partition wizard and it works now.

Here is a screenshot after running the recovery. You can see it looks funny with the negative used size. I did not apply any operation after taking this screen shot and will await further instruction. Thank you for taking the time to help me. I will be unable to do anything until I get home tomorrow evening from work. I'll check this forum during the day and try to answer what I can.