External HDD suddenly requires formatting, read as RAW instead of ntfs

Hey,

The scan if over, the missing 2TB couldn't be recovered. I attached a screenshot.

Question: don't all the partitions add up to more than 2TB ? technically how could it be that suddenly 1.9 of the 4 platters disappear ?

Sorry I try to understand this stuff ... I learnt to use a computer but am not yet very good in understand the real functioning behind all of this.

@Slartybart in itself the HDD is not in an enclosure, it is just that I can only place 2.5" HDD inside my laptop ;-)

Also, on the advice of Slartybart I downloaded the Seagate version of the Partition Wizard, turns out it will only install if the HDD directly wired in the PC, USB can't work.

Thanks for your help Bill

If I understand well, in my situation I am kind of forced to format. I'll just take some time to make sure I understand which software to use.

In post #6, during the first run of Partition Recovery wizard, you had allowed it to delete the partitions - whatever those were. Most probably the GPT structure.

Now the Partition Recovery Wizard shows all the deleted partitions.

Select all the partitions and click on Finish. Please note that it will only undo the mistake you did and we will be back to the original condition as it was when you started this thread.

From thereon we can start afresh.

@Slarty, I wish you are able to continue. I know pretty well I am in an uncharted territory namely Recovery from a GPT drive but sure I am taking every precaution not to alter the original faulty condition and make it still worse. The above corrective action is to undo a mistake flows69 did due to some communication gap. What do you think of it?

@flows69,, go ahead Select all the partitions and click on Finish. When the action is completed post a screenshot of how your drive appears in Partition Wizard.

You will then try PhotoRec. PhotoRec does not write anything to the drive and is absolutely safe. There is noway you can do any mistake.:)

You guys are great, thanks for the support. Alright before doing anything wrong, here is what I have right now. I can only check two of the partitions. Should I click finish anyway ?

I have no doubt Jumanji is more than competent to walk me through the recovery of my data. The only reason I was looking at other softwares is that I had stored on the HDD some files with very uncommon format. Mostly data sets which were created by specific statistical analysis programs. From what I understand I am not sure those could be recovered easily ...

In your previous screenshot all the six partitions are unchecked. Four of them showing as boot say lost/deleted.

When you put checkmarks on the the first two, do all those four boots turn to show as overlapped?(That would mean we are unable to get back to the original condition) If it is so and you are unable to put checkmarks on those four, then cancel the operation.

Get on to PhotoRec .