New
#11
Ok, so - all done. Mostly.
TL/DR - I've copied most of everything off that drive and onto others. And because of that, I'm ready to cut bait and call it a day. I'll reformat the drive, check it for errors, I suspect it will be fine and I can continue the rest of this 'project'.
If there's any technical testing or troubleshooting you want me to do to see what the problem is, then I'm happy to try it, but energetically I'm ready to move on, and can continue with the way things are now.
(end tl/dr)
Ok, so I did some further testing, and with either command line or DiskPart, the missing partition displayed as RAW, but under Minitool Partition Wizard it showed up as NTFS. Either way I was unable to find anything that was able to remount that partition.
I did try converting gpt to mbr but it wouldn't do it because of the 2T size limit. Somewhere, I forget which, DiskManagement or Minitool, sometimes would show the partition (entire drive?) as gpt, and sometimes as...nothing.
One of the drives that I needed to use to try to recover TO, FROM the glitchy 4T partition, was also a drive I was having problems with. But I slow formatted it and checked it after, and it tested a-ok. The problems were minor, so I think I'm ok and willing to trust this drive. (I'll call this drive "New T". It's a drive that was good, gave a few glitches when I tried to recover the Media drive to it, which caused me to reach out and get a loaner drive to use instead of this one. )
I was able to copy most everything off that glitched partition onto this drive, New T. I had to use two different programs. Recuva got most everything: Movies, Music, Videos, and everything that was on New T originally but moved when that drive started acting up. But for some reason it did not get my TV shows. So I used Minitool Partition Wizard to recover files off the partition, and it got most of my TV shows. I ended up getting Minitool Pro; it's pricey but so far has done more than other programs have, and I understand the interface. I will have to go back and check the TV shows; At least one show only copied 2 out of the 4 seasons, and about 1/3 of my shows are missing. Minitool quickly found the partition and folder structure, and very quickly, didn't have to wait for the full scan to end. The shows it missed I think would show up under a full scan, but: 1 - without the folder structure, 2- without file names and 3- all sorted together with every other 'recovered' file on the drive. I'm not going to sift through 3.5T of stuff I've already recovered just to find these missing TV files, only to recover them without names. It's easier for me to go back and replace them in that case.
So New T, the original planned recovery drive, has been emptied, slow formatted, and checked. In the process now of copying everything that was originally on it, back on to it.
My Media Disk (The media 5T MyPassport), that lost it's partition mounting, has had everything copied off of it, slow formatted and checked and now, through "Properties-->Tools-->check disk" shows no errors. I've rebooted and rescanned a couple times and each time it shows fine. So I'm willing to trust that it's ok. For now. In the process of putting everything that was on it back on it. I'll have to double check TV shows (and movies) as I have time/paranoia. But by all rights most everything should be fine and working
The Loaner 4T - The drive that lost it's mounting and the partition disappeared, the drive that's the focus of this thread, has been quick formatted and slow-scanned by WD Disk Diagnostics. It'll stay empty for now until I get to YET ANOTHER drive that I need to check and if necessary I'll use it as, yet again, the backup location. I'll probably run another checkdisk on it at some point, will secure erase it and return it to the owner.
Apologies for the wall of text. Just trying to wrap this up, I hate threads that people just stop responding without closing up the thread.
I'll probably leave this unsolved since I never really figured out what the problem was. If anyone has things they want me to try, please let me know.
Highlighting again that Recuva (free) worked well for most of the files I needed, and Minitool Partition Wizard (Pro), worked for the rest. Again, these were good files on a 'good partition'. Everything was there and un-fiddled with, I just couldn't get the partition to stay mounted. I'm surprised Recuva couldn't get everything. But here we are. I did try Aomei Disk Partition but... I forget why, but it didn't 'stick'. Didn't do what I had it do or something with the interface wasn't to my liking.
Thank you VERY much for your help, definitely helped keep me sane throughout getting this whole thing sorted.
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Final note unrelated to this thread but it's on my mind so putting here for posterity:
The original buggy disk, my Media 5T disk, I originally said just 'gave errors' when running Properties-->Tools-->Check Disk. I recalled what the actual errors were. When the pc said that "errors were found, click to correct", I clicked the 'more info' link which brought me to a log in DiskManagement.
This is what I saw:
Stage 3: Examining security descriptors ...
Security ID 0x116 is non-existent and unused
... queued for offline repair.
Three (?)sectors have that exact error - 116, 117 and 118.
The logs also say -
Stage 3: Examining security descriptors ...
Deleting an index entry with Id 117 from index $SDH of file 9.
Deleting an index entry with Id 116 from index $SDH of file 9.
Deleting an index entry with Id 118 from index $SDH of file 9.
Properties-->Tools would fix those errors but on reboot the issues would reappear.
Anyway, just putting that here for posterity as it came up in the thread. (This is all mostly for me so that if it happens again I can come back here and read what happened. I'm gonna forget the details in about 2 days, lol...)
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Thanks again!
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