External Hard drive has changed to RAW file system

[Kaktussoft]

TestDisk Step By Step - CGSecurity section "NTFS Boot sector recovery". Is Boot sector OK? Backup Boot sector OK? Are they the same?

Recovering An NTFS Boot Sector On An NTFS Partition Using Its Backup

TestDisk can use the backup boot sector to fix a corrupted NTFS boot sector. The primary boot sector is sector zero of the filesystem and the backup NTFS boot sector is located near the end of the filesystem. Even if the boot sector is accidentally overwritten, the backup should be intact. TestDisk checks the boot sector and the backup boot sector. If the boot sector and backup boot sector mismatch, you can

• restore the NTFS boot sector from its backup (Backup BS) or;
• update the backup NTFS boot sector with the current boot sector (Org. BS).

Dump can used to display the boot sector content in both hexadecimal and ASCII. If there is no valid boot sector available, TestDisk can still rebuild an NTFS boot sector.
Rebuilding An NTFS Boot Sector On An NTFS Partition

If both NTFS boot sectors are corrupted and you need to rebuild the NTFS boot sector, TestDisk searches the MFT (Master File Table: $MFT) and its backup ($MFTMirr). It reads the MFT record size, it computes the cluster size, and it reads the size of the Index Allocation Entry in the root directory index. Using all these values, TestDisk can provide a new boot sector. Finally it lets the user list the files before writing.
Repair An NTFS MFT

The MFT (Master File Table) is sometimes corrupted. If Microsoft's Checkdisk (chkdsk) failed to repair the MFT, run TestDisk. In the Advanced menu, select your NTFS partition, choose Boot, then Repair MFT. TestDisk will compare the MFT and MFT mirror (its backup). If the MFT is damaged, it will try to repair the MFT using the backup. If the MFT backup is damaged, it will use the main MFT.

 

[Kaktussoft]

Type=07 so NTFS. All diskpart output is as expected. No problems at all. It even has a drive letter J.
Only problem it is RAW.....

 

[gd5583]

Its the Advanced menu I can't seem to gain access to. Below are the screens I go through in the order I have listed them, the option I chose on each screen is the one highlighted in white.

 

[Kaktussoft]

Very strange.... never seen that. Maybe try the linux version of testdisk (?) Or post in a testdisk forum

 

[Kaktussoft]

Boot to http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/666-advanced-boot-options.html then "repair your computer" then command prompt.

diskpart
select disk 5
select part 1
detail part
[B][COLOR=red]--- only continue if this is the RAW partition? ---[/COLOR][/B] 
exit
 
bootsect /nt60  Q:
[B][COLOR=red]--- replace Q with actual drive letter of RAW partition found above ---[/COLOR][/B]

Post results

 

[gd5583]

When using repair computer command prompt there are no disk partitions to show. When using list disk it looks like my drive becomes disk 1 (disks 2,3,4,5 state no media). I have tried the following:

Disk part
list disk

Disk ### Statuss Size Free Dyn Gpt
Disk 0 Online 931 GB 1116 MB
Disk 1 Online 0 GB 0 GB
Disk 2 No Media 0 GB 0 GB
Disk 3 No Media 0 GB 0 GB
Disk 4 No Media 0 GB 0 GB
Disk 5 No Media 0 GB 0 GB

select disk 1
Disk 1 is now the selected disk

list part
There are no partitions on this disk to show.

Repeated the above for disk 5 and same results occur

Edit if I type select part 1 error appears as follows:

Virtual Disk service error:
The disk is not initialised.

 

[Kaktussoft]

Very strange. Still in recovery environment->command prompt:

dir/s  X:\bootsect.exe

Where is bootsect.exe ? For example in x:\windows\blabla . then

copy  x:\windows\blabla\bootsect.exe  c:\

Succesfull? If so, boot in win7 normally. Now http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/783-elevated-command-prompt.html then:

c:\bootsect.exe /nt60  j:  /force

post results

 

[gd5583]

Very strange. Still in recovery environment->command prompt:

dir/s  X:\bootsect.exe

Sorry don't know if I can do screen shots from this mode. The first command brings up the following:

Volume in drive X is Boot
Volume serial number is D60A-0DC2

Directory of x:\Windows\System32

07/13/2009  05:14 PM  97,280 bootsect.exe
1 file(s) 97,280

Directory of x:\Windows\winsxs\x86_microsoft-windows-winpe_tools_31bf3856ad364e
35_6.1.7600.16385_none_fad5f90498336010

07/13/2009 05:14 PM 97,280 bootsect.exe
2 file(s) 194,560 bytes
0 dir(s) 30,629,888 bytes free

Based on the above, what would I type for 2nd command?

 

[Kaktussoft]

Screenshots are impossible in that mode.

Please do:

copy  x:\Windows\System32\bootsect.exe  c:\

 

[gd5583]

Screenshots are impossible in that mode.

Please do:

copy  x:\Windows\System32\bootsect.exe  c:\

The above worked fine, advised that 1 file successfully copied

Next step in Windows 7 however:

 

[Kaktussoft]

So you did copy "x:\Windows\System32\bootsect.exe c:\" in recovery environment.
Please boot to recovery environment ->command prompt again

dir  c:\bootsect.exe
dir c:\
dir c:\users

Is bootsect realy there? In users folder is your account name? So C is really the OS partition?

 

[Kaktussoft]

In winre ->command prompt do:

move  c:\bootsect.exe  d:\

Reboot normally and do

c:\bootsect.exe /nt60 J:

OS drive is called C in win7 and D in windows recovery!

 

[gd5583]

It looks like bootsect.exe is there for first 2 commands.

For c:\users however it says File not found.

When in Windows 7 normal mode my OS is installed on C:

 

[Kaktussoft]

Do #32

 

[gd5583]

Managed to do that, results as follows:

 

[Kaktussoft]

You can delete c:\bootsect.exe later if you wish.

Try to make a linux boot cd with testdisk. I'm almost sure it's a faulty ntfs boot sector or faulty $MFT. testdisk can fix that.... normally

 

[gd5583]

You can delete c:\bootsect.exe later if you wish.

Try to make a linux boot cd with testdisk. I'm almost sure it's a faulty ntfs boot sector or faulty $MFT. testdisk can fix that.... normally

OK thanks, I'll look into that. I have never used Linux so will have to research into it more, so it may be a few days before I post anything further on this. Thanks very much for your help so far with this, much appreciated.

 

[Kaktussoft]

Just a boot disk with testdisk on it. Can be anything. Download the ISO, burn and boot from it.

TestDisk on Live rescue CDs

TestDisk (not always the latest version) is included on the following free rescue CDs:

• ALT Linux Rescue is a weekly-updated hybrid (CD/Flash, BIOS/UEFI) image
• BootMed is a live CD created to help those not familiar with Linux repair or recover their Windows Computer from a Live CD, includes TestDisk tutorials.
• BootMed Plus is a premium live CD with built in video tutorials. TestDisk and PhotoRec are featured in BM+'s advanced menu.
• CAINE Computer Aided INvestigative Environment, a complete forensic environment.
• Create a TestDisk FreeDos LiveCD
• Frenzy is a "portable system administrator toolkit," LiveCD based on FreeBSD. It generally contains software for hardware tests, file system check, security check and network setup and analysis. Size of ISO-image is 200 MBytes (3" CD)
• GParted LiveCD
• Hiren's BootCDdownload - Multiple rescue tools. It has MiniXP(Windows LiveCD), Parted Magic(Linux) and Dos programs
• iloog Gentoo-based Greek LiveCD
• grml Debian based live CD for sysadmins. 2.3 GB of text tools and documentation compressed onto one CD. Popular with blind users also as it just works.
• Knoppix (Hints about TestDisk usage on Knoppix)
• Parted Magic
• PLD RescueCD
• Recovery Is Possible Linux rescue system
• Slax-LFI 6.6 version on Slax-LFI 1.2
• System Rescue CD
• Ubuntu-Rescue-Remix
• Ultimate Boot CD Linux/freeDOS-based computer rescue CD.

 

[Kaktussoft]

This is a well know recue cd Ubuntu Rescue Remix | The Rescue Remix provides a Free-Libre Open-Source data recovery software toolkit based on Ubuntu
Direct ISO download: http://ubuntu-rescue-remix.org/files/URR/iso/ubuntu-rescue-remix-12-04.iso

 

[gd5583]

This is a well know recue cd Ubuntu Rescue Remix | The Rescue Remix provides a Free-Libre Open-Source data recovery software toolkit based on Ubuntu
Direct ISO download: http://ubuntu-rescue-remix.org/files/URR/iso/ubuntu-rescue-remix-12-04.iso

I have tried using this over the weekend but still no luck

First I followed Create a Bootable USB Flash Drive to make a bootable USB flash drive, it wouldn't boot from it (bootmgr missing) so I burned it to a blank DVD.

From the DVD I was able to boot into ubunto program and I managed to find test disk on there. The bad news however is that my faulty drive is not listed in the test disk list of drives (2nd screen).

Any idea how to get this to appear?

If possible does anyone have a basic step by step guide for someone who has no experience of doing this?

Also do you have a list of basic commands for using the ubunto software, I found the test disk one but cant seem to find any others, not even to exit the program.

I was going to ask in the forums on the above site but no one has posted in them in almost 3 years.