My external hard drive suddenly became unllocated:

Thebeholder said:

.......If I had proceeded to apply the two pending operations with partition recovery wizard regardless of questions mark, no thing wrong would be going on, would it?
As a result, You, of course, wanted me to apply this test disk only in order for I am quite sure that all my datas will be restored as they were, don't you?

Yep, you are absolutely correct.

You seem to be too much worried as to the status of the files when you go ahead with partition recovery using Partition Wizard - in spite of my repeatedly telling that rewriting the partition table in the first sector of your hard drive will in no way affect your data. I am exasperated.

And that is why I suggested that you go with TestDisk, where you can copy the files to another drive and see for yourself.:) ( I cannot peep into your drive and see "how is, what is")

And TestDisk does not require any installation. You merely extract the zip file into the root of your C drive or any other new folder.. You will find the files extracted into a folder named testdisk-6.14-WIP. Just click/double click on testdisk_win.exe to run it. ( I don't know what all you have done and why that C:users/blah blah/AppData/local /Temp/ blah blah blah blah )

Thank you so much indeed, yes, it is now alright. but I exracted the Winzip I dowonloaded two times, the first time I extract I got this,


Then, I extract testdisk-win above to get these files and folders:





But do you think that test disk will show all my files and folders with the same name even if they are written in Arabic

Thank you so much indeed, Mr.jumanji for your continuing helping me.
I really applied the two operations pending with the partition recovery wizard yesterday before seeing your last post. I have not experienced such a problem at all. That drive has been having all my datas. I am going to copy it to at least three another external hard drives.

I am quite surprised that when I appied the two operations pending in partition recovery wizard, I saw that the hard drive returned as it was. But only I want to ask you these points and I hope you will be answring me.

First: When I connected my external drive, I didn't see that autoplay shows me as it was.
Second: The two operations took only less than one minute. Why did the testdisk take more than four hours and it faild in the end?

Third: if there a hard drive formated or deleted, had been recreated, could I be able to use recover the datas stored on the previous partition with this partition recovery wizard? I really formated and deleted a hard drive containing datas. Then, I recreated it again. After that, I have tried applying 'partition recovery wizard' to see if the hard drive will be recovered or not. I didn't see any folders or files in that hard drive, except 'System Volume 'Information'$RECYCLE.BIN'
However, there were not any personal datas of mine.

Finally: Do you think that I can open another new thread for the problems of restoring images containing layout differring from the layout to be written? Because as I said in my very first post this:
I resotred an system image of a different version of windows contaning two partitions (system and C(OS), on a diffrenent version of windows installed on a diffrent layout(two partitions) of hard drive.
In other words,
Images restored was two partition(system(active) and C(OS)] of Windows 64x home premium.
Windows installed was two partition(C(OS) active) and personal Data partition(E).
When I restored image via Macrium CD, I drugged the two partition(System and C) one after the the partition (C) on desitnation. So, the personal partition (E) on destination remained as it was.
Also, I moved all user accounts to another partition other than system partition(C) in the image restored.

So when I fixed the boot error with Macrium Secure CD 4.0, and reached to windows' login, there were two user accounts, I logged in with a user while my external hard drive was connected, I faced that I was logged with a temporary porfile because the user profile account I logged in was moved to the partition I didn't restored.



So the Windows prepared another desktop of the user account.


So I think the Windows caused the problem while preparing desktop of my user account.

NB: when I logged off, and then I have tried logging in with same user account again, I found that
The group policy client service failed login. Access is denied.

The same thing happened with the other user account(on the first log in I logged in with a temporary porifle, then Access is denied


In conclusion: I think that I should have restored all the layout of image(System:active partition, C:\ 'OS' and D:\ 'personal data' ) as long as I moved all the user accounts to another partition other than system partition because logged with the user accounts moved to D, windows created a temparay profile because it thought that profile of user deleted.

However, this raised another question which is very important: If I have OS installed on "System:active, and C: and then I moved all the user accounts to another partition which is specified for my personal data, for instance 'D'
So, I have imaged only 'System and C:' alone
Also I have imaged D alone.
When I restore OS(system and C partiton) alone, I will face like this problem. Then what is the benefit from letting images of Windows(system and C partitions) be sperated from my personal data( 'D' partition) in my case.
In other words, I have alway been hearing that some users say it is better to move all your personal data to another partition other than System partition in the internal hard drive. Then, put the images of 'OS'(full and differentials) on a partition on an external hard drive and all your personal datas on another partition on the same external hard drive.

Internal hard drive (System: Active, C:\(OS))>----------------------> D:\ personal data(move all user accounts here)
External hard drive: E:\ for images of System and C:\ 'full and differentials' <---> F:\(images daily for D:\)

I really have been facing too many problems with restoring images, in particular if I restore image created of the different layout of a hard drive on Windows installed on another layout of a hard drive,
Such as, this message 'No bootable device, insert boot cd and press any key', which appears after restarting computer inside the Macrium environment, although that the image has been compeleted successfully in the Macrium environment.
When I booted to Mini partition bootable CD, I found that there isn't an active partition. So, I let the C: active, the problem was solved.
I hope you understand me.