Hard Drive Management Gone Haywire

[Injust]

Hey,
Yup, I screwed up totally Now, I can't even boot. In Diskpart, the drive shows as RAW. What should I do?

 

[gregrocker]

Download and burn to CD Partition Wizard bootable CD ISO. Rightclick on the ISO file, choose Burn or Open with Windows Image burner to burn to CD.

Then run Partition Wizard Partition Recovery Wizard - Video Help to see if it finds anything to recover. If not I would run Partition Wizard Partition surface test to check the HD condition as it may be failing.

If you cannot recover any partitions then try booting the Win7 installer to create and format a partition to reinstall as shown in Clean Install Windows 7 steps 6/7.

Look over these steps which assure a perfect Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7 so this time you stick with only the tools and methods which assure you'll get and keep a perfect install.

 

[Injust]

Download and burn to CD Partition Wizard bootable CD ISO. Rightclick on the ISO file, choose Burn or Open with Windows Image burner to burn to CD.

Then run Partition Wizard Partition Recovery Wizard - Video Help to see if it finds anything to recover. If not I would run Partition Wizard Partition surface test to check the HD condition as it may be failing.

If you cannot recover any partitions then try booting the Win7 installer to create and format a partition to reinstall as shown in Clean Install Windows 7 steps 6/7.

Look over these steps which assure a perfect Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7 so this time you stick with only the tools and methods which assure you'll get and keep a perfect install.

As of now, I am using TestDisk and analyzing the disk. I have spent 2hrs on it, and am at 70%, so do you know how to use the program and can you guide me through?

 

[Injust]

I'm following the guide over here right now, and I just finished the quick search. Remember how I had 2 partitions and a block of unallocated space between them? The first partition was my system/data, and the second was a test partition. I made a screenshot available over here, and it has found the test partition only.
What do I do now? Should I proceed with the deep search in TestDisk, or follow your instructions and use Partition Wizard?

EDIT: At this rate, it'll take more than an hour to finish the deep scan for TestDisk, so I'm booting from my Partition Wizard USB and hope that it'll boot.

FYI: I was using the USB of PartedMagic, and when I used that partition management software, it detected the partition but the entire thing was detected as unallocated memory

 

[Britton30]

As Greg said don't just run stuff if you don't know how or what it does. there have been several steps posted which have worked for many others.

 

[Injust]

Only problem here, Greg, is that I don't have access to CDs right now, only USBs. I need to be able to boot PW from a USB!

 

[Injust]

Download and burn to CD Partition Wizard bootable CD ISO. Rightclick on the ISO file, choose Burn or Open with Windows Image burner to burn to CD.

Then run Partition Wizard Partition Recovery Wizard - Video Help to see if it finds anything to recover. If not I would run Partition Wizard Partition surface test to check the HD condition as it may be failing.

If you cannot recover any partitions then try booting the Win7 installer to create and format a partition to reinstall as shown in Clean Install Windows 7 steps 6/7.

Look over these steps which assure a perfect Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7 so this time you stick with only the tools and methods which assure you'll get and keep a perfect install.

Just got PW working on a CD, now doing the Surface Test.

 

[gregrocker]

Did it find anything when you ran the Partition Recovery Wizard?

 

[Injust]

I just did the Surface Test, it was all good. No errors.
Doing the partition recovery wizard now. Just saying, it's finding a lot (about 6 so far) 3MB partitions that I didn't make. They only have System Volume Information folders in them

DETAIL:
I'm at 32% right now. It has so far found 4 partitions, none of the matching size of mine.
All of them are NTFS, and the label is "Boot". They are all 3.01MB in size, and all have 2.45MB used. All the statuses are "Lost/Deleted"

 

[Injust]

Ok, so I'm at 58% done with a full scan on partition recovery. I see 7 of those partitions that are NTFS, and the label is "Boot". They are all 3.01MB in size, and all have 2.45MB used. All the statuses are "Lost/Deleted".

 

[gregrocker]

Wait to see what else it finds before it finishes. If it's RAW right now and you have nothing else there I would recover whatever it finds since it may be more than what it reports.

Does PW also label the HD "raw?"

 

[Injust]

Wait to see what else it finds before it finishes. If it's RAW right now and you have nothing else there I would recover whatever it finds since it may be more than what it reports.

Does PW also label the HD "raw?"

PW labels the filesystem as "unallocated" and the drive as "logical". It has found 7 "boot" partitions, and the 200GB "test" partition that I made.
73% through right now. Not looking good. The partition with mah data was at the very beginning of the drive, and the test partition was at the very end. It has found the test partition, but not the data partition

 

[gregrocker]

I would restore whatever it finds after a full scan, then if your data is still missing you can run Data Recovery like Recuva - Features since the only risk for making data unrecoverable is to format the drive.

 

[Injust]

I'm just super anxious because I have LOTS of data there. I used to have images with Paragon Backup & Recover, but I had to uninstall/delete because the driver was giving me BSODs. And I recently deleted my only System Restore checkpoint
How am I supposed to run Recuva? Isn't it only for running from Windows?
Also, do you know how to run TestDisk? I've heard and seen that it's a pretty good partition recovery tool.

 

[gregrocker]

Why were you doing extremely complicated and risky operations like deleting your System Reserved partition without even backing up your files first? This is totally reckless.

You'll need to use a boot disk to try to recover your data. Read about Recuva in the link.

 

[Injust]

I had a System Restore checkpoint, but I deleted it yesterday
I know, Pretty pissed off at myself too.

 

[gregrocker]

System Restore has nothing to do with backing up your files externally or to another HD.

Here is another method to back up to the cloud: Sync, Backup and Store your Files to the Cloud with Skydrive - Windows 7 Forums

 

[Injust]

Yeah, thanks
I had backups of my files on the same drive, which I thought was enough, but clearly, I wasn't able to think enough to realize that I should have immediately made a backup before messing around

 

[Injust]

Just finished the full scan, I see everything BUT the stuff I need.
FYI...
The Boot partitions, I have no idea what they are. All of them contain about the same thing and are from like 2005.
The Test partition has nothing I need, it was just a blank 200GB test partition
The Pagefile partition was originally a partition that I made just for a pagefile, so there's nothing at all in there.

 

[Injust]

I'm looking at the left side of the screen, see 2 things, "Rebuild MBR" and "Intialize to GPT Disk".
Would any of them be useful?