Solved Hard disk/Partition Problem

[nutz3390]

Hello everybody, to quickly sum up the problem:

I had two harddisk, A and B. A had 2 partitions, "OS" (win 7), and "Programs", and B had 1 partition "Files".

Harddisk A was the "primary" and "system" harddisk, while B was just a "logical" i guess.
(I still haven't really figured out what it means.)

One day harddisk A crashed and went broken, so i couldn't boot the OS anymore.
I put harddisk B into another computer, and installed an OS on it on a new partition, so that B now had 2 partitions.
A was out of the picture - the programs on it were easy to reinstall anyway.

I put harddisk B back into my computer, and booted it from the newly OS partition.
Here i found that my old files wasn't accessible, in "Disk management" the partition with my files was now labelled "RAW". I didn't know what it meant, so i just clicked "create new partition" but chose "do not format", and hoped that it would create something showing my files.
All it did was create a new inaccessible partition showing up in my "Computer" folder, containing 0 byte/0 byte. This partition has no "Filesystem" (ntfs, fat) in disk management, but its status is "In order"

I have tried some different partition recovering softwares.
Chkdsk says "unable to determine filesystem".
'Testdisk' was too advanced for me to use. It found some partititions, and i thought it was the "package of partitions" i needed to restore, but when i restored them, it deleted my newly installed OS, and didn't recover my partition "Files", so now i am back on my second computer.

Some of the recovery software CAN detect my files and wants to copy them to "a specified folder", but i have 400 GB files, and no more harddisks to back it up on.
There must be a way to restore my previous partition without needing to transfer the 400 GB data to another harddisk.

My own idea is to delete this newly made partition "logical drive", since it has no filesystem and contains no data, but the problem is that it says "All data on this diskunit will be deleted", and i do not know if that includes my "hidden" data.

Any ideas? anything would be helpful.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Your files were originally on disk B in a partition named "Files".

Is that partition still visible in Disk Management or has it been overwritten or deleted?

 

[nutz3390]

It is visible with recovery software that can spot old partition structures, i can even recover the files.
But it is not visible in Disk management. Only this new, empty logical partition without filesystem which i am afraid of deleting.

The 400 GB space on the harddisk is in use... the files must be there. i just dont know how to get my partition back instead of this empty one without filesystem.
Windows says that the problem is, that i need to format the partition in order to acces it. but that would delete the files.

Maybe i should try Testdisk again, it seemed right, i just didn't know how to control it properly :/

 

[seavixen32]

A RAW partition is one that has no recognised file system and is normally rectified by formatting it.

However, if you format the partition you reduce the chances of recovering your data from it.

Have a look here: Raw Recovery: Recover files from Raw Partitions, Hard Disk Drive, Memory card, SD Card. Raw File System Recovery Software.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

You state that you moved disk B to another computer and installed an OS on a "new" partition.

And you then moved disk B back to the original computer and your original "files" partition was then seen as "Raw" with no file system?

And you then highlighted this "raw" partition and chose "create new partition"?

I'm just trying to confirm your steps.

Did you knowingly ever make any changes to that "files" partition?

I don't see why that "files" partition should be seen as "raw" if you did not alter it in any way when you moved the drive to the other computer to install an OS to a "new" partition.

If, on the other hand, you did alter/delete/overwrite the original "files" partition, you may be in trouble.

Have you looked at a file recovery application such as Recuva?

 

[nutz3390]

Easeus which you are linking, was one of the softwares i used to scan my current partition structure. It found my old files, but when i clicked restore on that partition, it claimed that my partition wasn't "lost" yet. But it was willing to restore the OS system that testdisk had deleted, because that was labelled as "lost"/deleted.

 

[Corazon]

When you installed an OS on Harddisk B, did you create the new system partition out of unallocated space that was still there, or did you resize the Files partition? If you did, what software did you use to do the resize with?

 

[SIW2]

Try Partition Wizard - free home edition.

Click partition recovery - scan the affected part of the drive - Quick scan will be fine.

When it has finished - usually a few seconds, Tick ALL partitions you want to keep ( including existing ones ).

http://www.partitionwizard.com/free-partition-manager.html

[ It sounds like you are using Easeus data recovery wizard - it is very good - it recovers data - it does not recover partitions.

Easeus have a Partition Master which can recover partitions - but you may as well try MT solutions Partition Wizard - also very good and it's free ]

 

[nutz3390]

Thanks for the replies, you can close this thread

 

[seavixen32]

You're welcome.

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