disk structure damaged

OK, I have been following this thread off and on but didn't quite understand what your original disk structure was.Lots of grey areas.

"Trying to reboot gave a black screen, no post. After using "clear cmos" jumper and battery removal
I was eventually able to access the bios setup, save it and it now posts OK. (But no OS boot up)"

What is the OS that you were booting up? That is the first one.

Second "I booted from a Windows DVD and entered troubleshooting. Used diskpart/ list volume to see what I could.
The D: drive, sata, is where all the OS partitions were, now shows RAW."

When Samuria asked for the Windows Disk Management screenshot showing the disk RAW, you went into some circuitous route booting into XP with BART PE Rescue Disk, and that showed your drive in question with a drive letter C ( healthy) but no File System. Your recent screenshot in the last post makes things a little clear but your problem is a little complex inasmuch as you had installed Linux also on that disk.

Can I be of any help? I am not sure inasmuch as I do not know how the Linux installation would have modified the MBR . For the same reason FixMBR also may not work. It could perhaps work only if all the disk had been NTFS.

All this problem could have been avoided if only you had saved all the important sectors including most important sector viz. the MBR sector 0. Then you could have easily restored sector 0 from the backup.

In any case, when I saw the WinXP screenshot in post#3, two thoughts came to my mind.

1. Will assigning that disk / C as NTFS using MiniTool Partition Wizard help?

2. Will TestDisk find the partitions? I was veering to the second option of using TestDisk.

You said you had used TestDisk. Good. I shall catch on from there.

Please run TestDisk DOS version from a bootable pendrive and post each and every screenshot as you proceed. Let me see whether there is any light through the tunnel.

​Regain a lost drive using Test Disk - An Illustrated Guide - Windows 7 Help Forums

https://www.geekyprojects.com/storag...-table-or-mbr/

EDIT: On second thoughts, try bootable Minitool Partition Wizard first ( easier than TestDisk) and check to see whether it can recover the partitions.

​Bootable Partition Manger | MiniTool Partition Wizard Bootable Edition

I don't remember whether it was simrick or Caledon Ken or may be even Bree who gave this link in one of their posts. Thanks to them.

I've had various power cuts and other glitches before

Please forgive the obvious suggestion, but it sounds like you may need a UPS, and certainly need to start using disk imaging routinely.

E.g. Macrium reflect (free).

​I am afraid that I missed your post#10. It should have come in as I was composing my post ( post#11) and submitted. You had therein stated "It - EaseUs PM - successfully recovered every thing except the Linux partitions at the end, they'e still marked as unallocated."

Now returning to the TestDisk screenshots you had posted, in the fourth screenshot wherein [Quick Search] is highlighted you pressed ENTER and that took you to the fifth screenshot saying " Structure OK, ....Blah ... Blah " and you pressed ENTER. That took you to the 6th screenshot showing the Found partitions.

The question now is whether you should " [Write]" that partition table. Well, no one ( that includes me) can answer that question when you yourself are in doubt as to what exactly was the disk structure.

Go back to the fifth screen that says " Structure OK .......blah ...blah..... "

Important note below:

When I wrote my Guide to Using TestDisk in Seven Forums - https://www.sevenforums.com/software...ted-guide.html - way back in 2011, many other members chipped in and made significant contributions ( I was still in the learning process ).

One such post by ronski (post #71 in it ) quote - "Great tutorial, I have used test disk many times, However, there is a danger that has been overlooked here. If there is more than one partition in an extended partition, and the partition table is corrupted, there is a very high probability that TestDisk will return a finding, after running search, where the same partition is listed twice, for example, partition 2. will be listed twice. This is due to the table being corrupted and some overlap occurs. The danger here is, testdisk will by default, prefix BOTH partitions with the letter D, ie, DELETE. You must check each entry for partition 2 and check for files using the P switch. one will have no files and the other will contain your files. The one containing files must have it's prefix CHANGED to Primary or logical, using right/left arrow keys. the one with no files must remain as D for delete.

Failure to do this will result in test disk deleting both entries and subsequently the partition 2.
Something to be aware of before selecting 'write'.

Just thought I would share this," -unquote

And so there you are in that fifth screenshot in such a situation.. Process it as in the above note. ( hmmmm.... what complications have you made! I was happy when you said that you had made a backup of Sector 0 elsewhere in this thread. Prudence demands you make a fresh backup whenever you make changes to the partition structure, delete the old backups and safekeep the current backup elsewhere and not on the same disk.)

Before you do that, I would now fall back on Samuria's suggestion to make a sector to sector copy of your drive, if you are unable to make a decision and then try whatever you want on the faulty drive. I think you are skilled enough to find the right thing to do.

I shall now take a breather and comeback with a suggestion on what program to use to make a sector to sector copy. There are many programs that can make a sector to sector copy .

When it comes to sector to sector copy, only two programs come to my mind. ( I would shun programs like Macrium Reflect which are by design system backup programs with sector to sector cloning as an add-on and prefer programs that does just one specific op - sector to sector copy.)

Clonezilla - freeware - How to clone your hard drive with Clonezilla | TechRadar

SystemRescueCD (also freeware) - SystemRescueCd - System Rescue Cd Homepage

It is Linux based and since you seem to be well-versed in Linux may be you will find it more appealing and can also contribute more to my starter thread here Best method/tool for cloning a failing HDD for Data Recovery? Solved - Windows 7 Help Forums Though we used it to clone a HDD with bad sectors, one can use it for cloning a good drive as well. In its usage on the first run it will copy all the good sectors first and fast and then start hammering the bad sectors during subsequent runs trying to extract the juice out of it. If your HDD is good then you can order just a single run. (For data recovery, 3 runs is ordered usually.) On certain issues discussed therein that required a Linux handle , I couldn't contribute anything since I do not know anything Linux. That thread was kept as simple as possible keeping in mind ordinary Windows users like me having no knowledge of Linux .

Hi jumanji,
I'm still not sure about Testdisk - on the "current partition structure" it shows [win10], the 136GB
logical drive, but after the results of the quick search it's gone. Do I have to add it back manually
using cylinder, head & sector?

Is it possible to have Testdisk just write the updated info (the Linux stuff) to the disk and leave everything else as-is? When you highlight the partition showing linux and get it to display the files, they are there
so that geometry must be correct.

Here's a general update - I put the sata disk back into the original PC. Windows 8 would not boot. I had to run
bootrec /fixmbr, /fixboot & /rebuildbcb. Now Windows 8 is booting and looking OK.

I can no longer boot XP through the Windows 8 boot loader as I could before, it complains about ntldr.
Where is the system looking for it? it certainly exists in the root folder of the first (boot, primary,active) partition.
In fact to make sure it was good I booted from the XP cd and ran its fixboot from the recovery console
and then XP booted just fine.
Then reinserted Windows 8 dvd and did the startup repair (took about 15 seconds). This puts back
things as they were, XP still will not boot up through the Windows 8 boot loader.
I'm thinking doing a clean reinstall of Windows 8, this will probably fix all these little things.

On a side note, on my system booting XP through the Windows 8 loader was not entirely successful
because of the particular CPU I have (AMD FX4300)- certain programs would crash (Firefox for example).
It's a bug in Windows 8 loader that still exists in Windows 10. Apparently the loader would enable
certain capabilities of the CPU that XP did not support. This is fine when Windows 8 is actually booted,
but if you choose XP, the 8 boot loader forgets to revert the settings (this was explained to me by a
Firefox developer).

I used to get around this boot loader anomaly by invoking the Bios Post boot menu, choose the
second HDD which had grub (the Linux boot loader)installed.
Within its menu was a link to XP's ntldr and it booted this way directly
bypassing the Windows 8 loader altogether. Can't do this anymore, grub no longer works, probably
because Linux partition is missing.

I have downloaded and burned the latest knoppix Linux rescue disk DVD, it's supposed to have
many tools, I'll check it to see if there is anything relevant.
Unfortunately, I wish my Linux skills were better, they're intermediate at best. Most of these tools use
the GUI so should be fine

Here's a couple more images, the updated Disk Management showing all the present partitions
as they should be, also the boot error.

EDIT - the problem with the XP boot was caused by missing info in the ntldr section of the BCD.
Use Bcdedit /enum you can see the legacy boot section as follows:

Windows Legacy OS Loader
------------------------
identifier {ntldr}
device partition=D:
path \ntldr
description Earlier Version of Windows

the device partition info was missing. I fixed it by using this command:
bcdedit /set {ntldr} device partition=D:

jumanji said:

I don't remember whether it was simrick or Caledon Ken or may be even Bree who gave this link in one of their posts. Thanks to them.

It was me @jumanji, and you're very welcome, I've learned a lot by following your posts so it's nice to be able to give something back.

Top Tip: if you know something was once available, but the web page no longer lists it, try looking for older versions of that page in the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.

Bree said:

It was me @jumanji, and you're very welcome, I've learned a lot by following your posts so it's nice to be able to give something back.

Top Tip: if you know something was once available, but the web page no longer lists it, try looking for older versions of that page in the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.

Thank you @Bree for the Wayback Machine. Now tell me how do I go back to my twenties?

davexnet said:

Hi jumanji,
I'm still not sure about Testdisk - on the "current partition structure" it shows [win10], the 136GB
logical drive, but after the results of the quick search it's gone. Do I have to add it back manually
using cylinder, head & sector?

Is it possible to have Testdisk just write the updated info (the Linux stuff) to the disk and leave everything else as-is? When you highlight the partition showing linux and get it to display the files, they are there
so that geometry must be correct.

You have done a good job recovering the disk but for the Linux partitions. Amazing and well done.

If after a Quick Search some partitions are still missing, you should do the [ Deeper Search]. Try it and check. If after Deeper Search it finds all your partitions then [Write] (As a matter of abundant caution backup all the important sectors as shown now. I use bootice for that ã€�BOOTICE v1.3.3.2: 功能强大的å�¯åŠ¨ç»´æŠ¤å·¥å…·ã€‘-å*�逸轩
Saving with bootice: Lost partitions! Solved - Windows 7 Help Forums )

If TestDisk running on Windows does not succeed, run TestDisk on Linux. Atleast one user had reported that TestDisk on Linux did what TestDisk on Windows didn't.

TestDisk on Live rescue CDs: TestDisk Livecd - CGSecurity

I would think there is no way you can write the Linux partitions only keeping the rest as it is. It is so in Partition Wizard. One has to select all the found partitions that would bring the disk to the original condition.. If only a few are selected then partition tables for those partitions only will be written in sector 0. Rest of the space will remain unallocated.