No OS found. C:\ drive became RAW

[dunjenz]

The disks appear the same as post 14, so I am not posting a screenshot. Is it possible to allocate the NTFS where it says Used -514% to the unallocated space in Disk 2?

Anyways, I will try photorec now.

When I select the 400GB partition, I do not see Copy Partition. i do see the Copy Partition Wizard though, but I don't think that is what you were referring to.

 

[jumanji]

If Copy partition does not show up that would mean you cannot do that operation.The Copy Partition Wizard is the same thing in wizard form. When you click on it the wizard will kick in and ask you to select the partition you want to copy and most probably that unallocated partition may not show up in the disk map for you to select.You can try.

Go ahead with PhotoRec and hope for the best. Again you will need a pendrive or external drive (with sufficient space to copy the photos) connected before you run PhotoRec When you get to the screen to select the file formats to be recovered select jpg only.

I am retiring now.

 

[jumanji]

Forgot to tell you. You shouldn't do anything like creating a new partition or copying to the same drive from which we are trying to recover data.

 

[gregrocker]

To me, RAW means ruined. Then to have PW which is the most reliable determiner of the partitioning give a negative per centage for the used space is a level of corruption that I've never seen. So you may go ahead to try to rescue files which may be readable but also may be jumbled beyond repair.

This is a tragic life lesson in the importance of backing up. I root my User folders where all data is kept in OneDrive so they a copy is instantly sent to the Cloud where they sync all my other devices as soon as they are turned on. At the minimum I would set up Windows Backup to save your Libraries to another hard drive in nearly real time to have a backup. Not having a backup is reckless since the hard drive can die at any time.

As a consolation you can have the best install of Win7 possible following these steps to Clean Reinstall Windows 7.
If you replace the drive with an SSD you'll have the best upgrade possible, too - even better than buying a new high-end PC without one.