Recover data from a mistakenly converted dynamic disk to basic

numbskull · 23 Jul 2014

hey there,
upon changing desktop computer and moving all the hard drives from one to another, my friend clicked on convert to basic instead of simply activating hard drive in computer mangement... the disk is basic now with 1 partition instead of previous 2 extended logical partitions and all data were lost.

upon researching, tried some recovery softwares but with no luck, i was directed to use partitionguru (diskgenius previously) and upon partition recovery, its showing me the "lost partition" with all the file and folders as they were, which is good, but its not showing a fully used volume as it was

https://www.dropbox.com/s/gj5dv7ceuqdwuy2/2014-07-17%20...

now i know that previously the partition was an extended partition, so originally the volume had one drive letter with 2 partitions in it.

2 questions i would like some help with if u may,

1- if i recover like it is, will it know that its a 2tb partition extended into 2 931gb and hence restore the full 2tb or theres some other thing that i have to do then. (IS IT SAFE TO SAVE THE PARTITION TABLE AS IT IS)
2- if the above is the case, can i recover the files to as they were, AS TO THE SAME DRIVE ITSELF

thanks for ur support,

ICIT2LOL · 24 Jul 2014

Hello and welcome numbskull mate try this

BOOTABLEUBUNTU

Makea bootable Ubuntu disk http://www.ubuntu.com/download

Setthe BIOS to boot from the optical when the machine boots it will show you ascreen with TRY or INSTALL > select TRY. You can of course remove the hard drive and any otherdrives when doing this as if the optical alone is the only drive left in themachine then the BIOS will only find it to boot from.

Whenit is finished - it takes very little time you will get a screen like in thepic .

Openthe drive you want > User and dig down until you get to the data / settingsyou may be able to copy / paste the material you want to an external source orother installed drive doing this.

Iam not sure if it will but I have recovered tons of data etc using this methodboth on "dead" or just plain drives that you cannot get data fromusing Windows.
Whether you have destroyed the data in that partition or not will depend on what you can see.

Maybe an outside chance might be running Recuva https://www.piriform.com/recuva < free version is good enough.

numbskull · 25 Jul 2014

u still didnt reply to my questions, but still thank u for trying to help anyways!

partitionguru helped a lot even more than ddrescue for the user interface was friendly and most of all it works on windows and no need to boot

it found my partition table with all the files and folders as they were BUT with one prob is that its showing half of the hdd (its a 2TB showing 931GB and the rest is FREE) so when i recovered the files i was able to do so but seems when it reaches a file thats originally on the second unrevealed partition it tell me "error on copying...incorrect parameters" and cant recover them... so recovery was successfull for 931GB only

i dont know if am explaining it right the hdd is 2 extended partitions with one drive letter (spanned if not mistaken)

any more ideas to help solve my problem
thanks,

essenbe · 25 Jul 2014

This is a tutorial similar to what ICit2lol described Emergency Kit - save your files from a dead OS.

As far as the recovery and the methods, it really depends on how the partitions were spanned. If they were striped, you may not be able to recover the files. Striped puts half a file on 1 partition and half on another, is my understanding. If you had backups or images, you could recover that. Most images can be mounted just like another drive and files copied from them. The best method, to me, is recover what you can to another hard drive and re partition your problem drive as you would like it, then replace the files as you would like them. You could also try giving that other partition a drive letter, then Windows could 'see' it. if Windows wants to format the drive, do not do it. Perhaps you could explore it and recover part of the files anyway. If you can get the partition where Windows can see it, you can use the method above, or Copy & Paste - in Windows Recovery Console Sorry I'm not much help. You may see if there is anything here that may assist you Recover lost or deleted files

ICIT2LOL · 25 Jul 2014

numbskull said:

u still didnt reply to my questions, but still thank u for trying to help anyways!

partitionguru helped a lot even more than ddrescue for the user interface was friendly and most of all it works on windows and no need to boot

it found my partition table with all the files and folders as they were BUT with one prob is that its showing half of the hdd (its a 2TB showing 931GB and the rest is FREE) so when i recovered the files i was able to do so but seems when it reaches a file thats originally on the second unrevealed partition it tell me "error on copying...incorrect parameters" and cant recover them... so recovery was successfull for 931GB only

i dont know if am explaining it right the hdd is 2 extended partitions with one drive letter (spanned if not mistaken)

any more ideas to help solve my problem
thanks,

Yep well like essenbe I was just giving you an alternative to stuff I know nothing of but have used myself for seeing what is on drives especially dead or dying ones or even drives that will not open with the operators correct password.