Win 10 changed my healthy logical dive into a recovery partition

Hi, I hope this can be reversed.

I was using my machine normally when it suddenly went dead while using file explorer, no BSOD, just stopped, no cpu activity light, nothing responsive. I had to power off at the PSU and then re-start which it did.

A few hours later I went to access files on an external drive (a 300Gb Seagate) and it did not show in explorer.

I looked in the Windows Disk Management utility and saw my previously functioning drive is now listed as "Healthy (Recovery Partition)". Right click on the drive area gives "Help" as the only useless option. Right click on the disk description gives "Convert to dynamic disk" as the only ungreyed option and greyed out RAID configuration options. I don't have RAID enabled in BIOS, I did earlier this year.

I used this drive for backups and I think I had an emergency boot from dos file set in a folder. Could Win have scanned that and re-configured ??

In Properties, it gives no indication of used and free space, and shows it as having a Master Boot Record partition style.

In 32 years of computers, I have not come across this before, so, do not know what to do to get my data back. Its one of several weird problems since doing a Win 7 to 10 upgrade

Any suggestions pleeeease.

Rgds Jonathan

Try connecting another drive, such as a USB Flash drive first and then your hard disk to force it take a new drive letter. go to Disk Management and try to add a drive letter if it doesn't have already. Is the partition there FAT or NTFS? If it is unknown, maybe the partition information is corrupt and you need to scan it with a data recovery utility to detect and backup your files. After having successfully backed up your data, format it and restore the data and it should be fine.

spapakons said:

Try connecting another drive, such as a USB Flash drive first and then your hard disk to force it take a new drive letter. go to Disk Management and try to add a drive letter if it doesn't have already. Is the partition there FAT or NTFS? If it is unknown, maybe the partition information is corrupt and you need to scan it with a data recovery utility to detect and backup your files. After having successfully backed up your data, format it and restore the data and it should be fine.

Hi Spapakons,

Sorry slow reply. Found my sudden shut down issues when changing screen was 3 capacitors on the GeForce video card starting to blow their tops. Built all my drives into a spare machine. The 'drive changed to a recovery partition' problem, of course, continues.

In the windows drive management utility, there is no option to change or assign a drive letter. All there is on right click on drive is 'Help'.

On the re-built machine, I ran the 'TestDisk' utility.

It shows that the drive as

Disk /dev/sdg - 320 GB / 298 GiB - CHS 38913 255 63
Current partition structure:
Partition Start End Size in sectors
1 P Windows RE(store) 0 1 1 38912
242 1 625136464
No partition is bootable

On then running the next stage 'Search' in the drive, it reports

The following partition can't be recovered:
Partition Start End Size in sectors
> HPFS - NTFS 38912 254 63 51634 253 52 204378857
[ Continue ]
NTFS, blocksize=4096, 104 GB / 97 GiB

TestDisk says a report in first stage that a partition is unrecoverable does not mean that something can be recovered using the higher level functions. Continuing to the next stage for the partition it reports

Disk /dev/sdg - 320 GB / 298 GiB - CHS 38913 255 63
Partition Start End Size in sectors
>D HPFS - NTFS 0 1 1 38912 254 63 625137282 (NTFS, blocksize=4096, 320 GB / 298 GiB)
D HPFS - NTFS 26191 1 11 38912 254 63 204378857 (NTFS found using backup sector, blocksize=4096, 104 GB / 97 GiB)

Structure: Ok. Use Up/Down Arrow keys to select partition.
Use Left/Right Arrow keys to CHANGE partition characteristics:
*=Primary bootable P=Primary L=Logical E=Extended D=Deleted
Keys A: add partition, L: load backup, T: change type, P: list files,
Enter: to continue

I then ran the deep search function which looks at all the sector blocks, but, that did not find any files.

In the options in the last 'Quote' I was not sure whether to run any of the 'Change partition characteristics' or whether to use any of the Key options. That is beyond my level of knowledge.

Or is there a better recovery utility to use ???

What made Windows do this to a healthy functioning data drive ????

Rgds Jonathan

Would it help to set the partition type to NTFS before searching for data? I am not familiar with TestDisk. In GetDataBack sometimes more than one partition table are found. If there is any recoverable data, it is a matter of selecting the correct table to proceed to the next step. You may also be asked for the partition type, and set it to NTFS. Any other poster?

spapakons said:

Would it help to set the partition type to NTFS before searching for data? I am not familiar with TestDisk. In GetDataBack sometimes more than one partition table are found. If there is any recoverable data, it is a matter of selecting the correct table to proceed to the next step. You may also be asked for the partition type, and set it to NTFS. Any other poster?

Hi Spapakons, thanks for your help. I note the following for any with similar problems with lost data.

As the higher level aspects of disk formatting is not my expertise, I was not properly understanding how to use TestDisk, and looked for my lost data in the wrong sector/table thinking its data showed that had content. As you had suggested, I should have looked at the other part.

When I used the 'P' (List files) option on the sector that looked to me as empty, there were all my files and using the TestDisk copy function, I could copy all 181Gb and 87,000 files to another drive. I then used the delete function to remove all data, and in Windows Disk Management, was able to make it into a simple volume again and assign a drive letter. Fully functioning drive back in use :)

For those with similar problems, TestDisk is brilliant and has enough what to do info for those less than expert. As OpenSource ware, it is excellent http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk.

I was directed to TestDisk by this thread, who also gives good instructions on use TestDisk and extended recovery actions. He was helping me with an earlier problem when Windows made one of my RAID drives into RAW format (which turned out to be caused by the mobo cell battery going flat and BIOS losing data and time/date reference)

http://html5.litten.com/updated-how-...ly-became-raw/

For info to check the health of all sectors in a drive, James Litten directed me to OpenSource GSmartControl which uses some of the SmartOn functions http://gsmartcontrol.sourceforge.net/home/

Hope all this helps others and thanks for your time Spapakons.

Rgds Jonathan

You are welcome!