Hard drive turned RAW after changing sata port. Table resotration

alx10mgmg · 01 May 2021

Hello everyone. I have a drive showing RAW data after switching sata ports (really odd). The drive shows up as NTFS in various other tools though. The drive health is showing a-ok through SMART and other tools. I imaged the drive and it ran into no bad sectors; went off without a hitch.

DMDE also showed no real issues with the drive or the image. I'm running into a wall, though, restoring the drive table rather than recovering it. DMDE shows many sectors so finding program files has proven difficult. R-Studio is showing the error "Unable to open the volume because MFT file is outside disk bounds" for a portion of the image. I think this could be an MFT error rather than a failing drive, but I'm not sure how to move forward. Additionally, testdisk shows the drive is potentially corrupted and unreadable on the image after mounting it. Using CHKDSK on the image also says "Unable to determine volume version and state." I realize chkdsk isn't a great tool for doing this, but I figured there was no harm on running it on the image.

I have mounted the image using Arsenal Image Mounter; I'm not sure if there is a better tool for this. The image was made with HDDSuperClone as a .dd file. The drive is a 1TB Seagate Barracuda. Please let me know if there's any more information needed!

I am on windows 10 Version 20H2 (OS Build 19042.928). Any help is appreciated!

Samuria · 01 May 2021

Eax means its lost the parition table so you need free software to do partition recovery as the all files will come back. Dont try recovering files

jumanji · 01 May 2021

Hi alx10mgmg,

1. Please post a screenshot of Windows Disk Management as per the guidelines here How to Post a Screenshot of Disk Management

2. Download and install MiniTool Partition Wizard v9.1( yes, Old version 9.1 in which Partition Recovery is free). Run it and post a screeenshot of how your drives look in it. ( the very first screen when you launch PW ) Download MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition 9.1 for windows - Filepuma.com

So you will be posting two screenshots. Do nothing more, nothing less ( for the time being).

alx10mgmg · 02 May 2021

I apologize for taking so long to reply, I was making a new image clone onto a full drive that I purchased today. I believe the .dd mounting software was causing some issue. Attached are the two images you requested! Disk 1/D: is the drive in question, E: is the new cloned image.

Hard drive turned RAW after changing sata port. Table resotration-disk-management-ss1.png

Hard drive turned RAW after changing sata port. Table resotration-partition-wizard-ss1.png

jumanji · 02 May 2021

Never mind if you are late. Do not burn the midnight oil. Go to sleep now. Wake up from sleep (whenever you want to) and then read my next post which I will take sometime to compose, edit and submit.

jumanji · 02 May 2021

OK.
The fact sheet:

1. The Seagate barracuda 1TB internal Data HDD shows it is healthy , has a drive letter D:. Means the volume exists and so does the partition table in Sector 2. Shows as RAW - absence of a file system.

2. PW shows the 1 TB drive as a GPT drive (not an issue), has a drive letter but shows it is unformatted - confirms absence of a valid file system.

So the issue is not partition loss requiring Partition recovery. but a corrupt file system.

Going by other indications you had mentioned, it is quite likely to be a Master File Table corruption. If indeed it is an MFT corruption, there is only a 5% chance that TestDisk can repair it. In the event it is unable to repair the MFT, you have to necessarily try a commercial software to recover the data.

With that preamble let us get on to the task.

1. Just to make sure it is not a partition lost, run Partition Recovery Wizard in PW.
Launch Partition Wizard. On the left Pane click on Partition Recovery Wizard > Next > Select your faulty Drive > Next > Full Disk > Next > QuickScan> Next. Allow the quick scan to complete. At the end of the quick scan you will get a window showing all the found partitions. If you had only one partition it will show that partition and its status as "existing". Only if it shows as "lost/deleted" we can attempt Partition Recovery. For the record post a screenshot. Cancel and close PW.

2. Now download the trial version of GetDataBack Pro GetDataBack — Data Recovery Software For Crashed Hard Drives and scan the faulty drive. Does it show all your folders/files ? If it shows you can preview/ open the files and check their integrity.

Note: There are four levels of scan . If Level 1 , doesn't succeed, try level 2 and then level 3 and Level 4.

Post the results.

After the results, we shall go ahead with TestDisk and check whether we can repair the file system corruption.

Be aware there is almost a 10.5 hour time difference and hence there may be a long delay from my side.

alx10mgmg · 02 May 2021

Thank you @jumanji I appreciate the help immensely. The following screenshots are the ones you asked for.

Hard drive turned RAW after changing sata port. Table resotration-partition-wizard-scan-results.png

This is the partition wizard screenshot. I was unsure what to select, so I have kept this window up to come back to at a later time.

Hard drive turned RAW after changing sata port. Table resotration-get-data-back-screenshot-1.png

This is the GetDataBack level 1 scan results. The two partitions are at sector 2048 and sector 34816 respectively.

Hard drive turned RAW after changing sata port. Table resotration-get-data-back-screenshot-2-running-.png

This is the GetDataBack Level 3 scan running; I figured it could be helpful to see the output log.

Hard drive turned RAW after changing sata port. Table resotration-get-data-back-screenshot-3-level-3-.png

This is the results of the GetDataBack level 3 scan. The sectors are @2048, @63, @34816, @1,332,860,876, @1,799,912,664, and @1,918,215,815 respectively.

Hard drive turned RAW after changing sata port. Table resotration-get-data-back-screenshot-4-extracting-.png

I chose to mount the file system @ sector 34816. This is the output window. It has still not completed; it is very slow with the output of "***Show_File_Preview: JPEG error #53" over and over

jumanji · 02 May 2021

hi @alx10mgmg

Are you there online? Respond if yes.

jumanji · 02 May 2021

Looks like you are not there.

OK. Your PW screenshot shows the two existing partitions one starting at LBA 2048 which is the 16MB MSR partition. The one starting at LBA 34816 is your data partition. Status : existing. So no partition lost. (The other two partitions shown pertain to your old partition scheme. You had subsequently reformatted your drive to get into the present partition scheme)

Put a tick mark against those two partitions listed, double click on the second one (starting at LBA 34816). Does it show your folders and files in a new window? Post a screenshot. Close that Window > Cancel and quit PW

Cancel and close PW. We have nothing more to do with PW.

Your GetDataback screenshot does not show the results of Level 1 scan.

After closing PW,Run Getdataback again. By default it is in Level 1. It shows two file systems. Mount the one starting at LBA 34816, let it scan and complete. Show me the results. If it does not show your folders and files, I am afraid there is no data in your drive. ( We shall anyway run TestDisk and check the filesystem status)

After the last format - whenever you did it - have you put any data in it?

alx10mgmg · 02 May 2021

Hello, I apologize I am online! I am a bit of a night owl and had the tab open, should've checked it sooner! Moving through your steps now. If I understand correctly, you're asking if I had data prior to formatting the drive recently? If this is correct, I must say I do not remember the last time the drive was formatted. This drive was used as my primary game and program storage, so I might have formatted the drive in the past 6 months. If I did, the table that existed in that past 6 months is what I am wanting to retrieve.

Here is the result of the GetDataBack level 1 scan after mounting the selected file system.

Hard drive turned RAW after changing sata port. Table resotration-get-data-back-screenshot-4.png

From what you have told me so far, this does not seem good unfortunately.