First off i would like to say sorry if i posted in the wrong forum im new. And now onto my Issue i had my hard drive from my old laptop and got an external for it and have been using it as a back up and it crashed. so i decided to fix it well at least attempt to anyways. so here it is when i plug it into my usb port it asks to to reformat so i clicked cancel and decided to get testdisk to see what is going on.

1. i found my drive and clicked [proceed]
2. went to [intel ] then hit enter
3. [analyze ] then hit enter

pressed enter and started analyzing

4. after it was completed this is what it looked like

5. so i did a deeper search

6. then when it was done this is what it showed

So i decided to try and re write the MBR code and i got this

does any one have any other ideas or have i missed something?

You are welcome here with your problem, even if there may be better places to try.

I have no experience of TestDisk, but others here may be able to advise.

I would however comment that there might be diagnostic value in the error message when writing the MBR code,

but so far as I know the MBR serves absolutely no purpose unless you wish to boot your system from that drive,

and it is unlikely that you could "Repair the MBR" if there was no partition that held the entry point for an operating system.

i.e. you need to recover partitions before you can "Repair the MBR".

Have you followed the advice in

http://www.cgsecurit...sk_Step_By_Step

N.B. The fourth "DOS WINDOW" in the above states "... correct geometry is required for successful recovery ..."

I hesitate to speculate upon the results of an incorrect recovery,

but I do remember several decades ago an IBM P.C. was within half a mile of a lightening strike,

and the engineer responsible (not me) replaced memory to fix blank zones on the display,

and then used Norton Disk Doctor to regain use of the application software.

Regretably IBM were stupid and defined the number of sectors per track and number of track per side with values in the CMOS RAM which had also suffered,

and Norton proceeded to format the disk with horribly inappropriate quantities of sectors per side etc, destroying the application software.

A TestDisk specific forum would be

http://forum.cgsecur...cdb417f6c87783e

That has 467 topics - if you are quick then yours could be no. 468

If TestDisk fails you then others here can advise on alternatives.

Years ago I prepared for disaster with a boot Repair CD version 4.? from

http://www.partition...lash-drive.html

That is now version 7.6 and is still free.

After a year or two my Laptop suddenly refused to Boot,

and the Boot Repair CD v 4.? had a "Partition Recovery Wizard" that identified several dozen boundaries of where partitions had been and what their "Volume Labels" had been.

I eventually selected which boundaries were the latest and the Wizard recovered all partitions.

After repairing the MBR the Laptop booted and Windows insisted that I run chkdsk on a corrupted FAT32 partition.

The other FAT32 partition and 5 off NTFS partitions had no problems.

Although I used the free versions of Minitool Partition Wizard, the developers have answered my emails within a day or two.

There is however no user forum.

The TestDisk forum may give you a faster response.

P.S.

I am confused by the DOS screen message

E: 120 GB etc.

What is E: ?

If no partition is found then how can it have a drive letter ?

Is E:\ the partition holding TestDisk ?

Perhaps a screen shot of Windows Disk Management would give us a better idea of the situation.

On Windows 7 I get there via

Start

then select "Computer" and right click and choose Manage

this opens Computer Management and under "Storage" I select "Disk Management"

This shows :-

the Disks that can be detected (including USB drives) ;

and all partitions (both with and without drive letters) ;

and unallocated spaces.

Hi Razlecast, and welcome to the forum.

Some good stuff in there from Alan, including the TestDisk specific forum.

None of us on here are experts at drive recovery, usually because it's not something which happens to us often, if at all. But there are some things you could try.

It sounds like TestDisk isn't finding a lost partition on your E: drive because it isn't actually lost, as Alan alluded to above. If I run the same routine on my good USB HD I get a similar response. So searching for a lost partition may not be the answer.

First, which Operating System are you running, and is that USB drive split into separate partitions or just a single drive?

Second, can you give more detail if possible as to what happened exactly? It crashed doesn't say a lot. And if it came to it, do you have another drive to which you could recover the data that problem drive contains?

Third, can you pick up the drive in "Disk Management", and if so what does it tell you.

Can you also download and install "MiniTool Partition Wizard Home Edition 7.6", mentioned briefly again by Alan, and see how your drive displays. Is it displaying as "Unallocated Space"? If you already have partitioning software, of course use that, but MiniTools Home is free and pretty good.

http://www.partitionwizard.com/free-partition-manager.html

Screenshots from Disk Management and MiniTools would be useful.

Thanks.

@razlecast, not so much specific help, but something to consider.

just in the last couple of weeks i have built a PC with just Unix on it (ubuntu 12.04 to be specific) and I have so far used it 3 times to access drives that Windows could not and managed to recover al lthat data.

if nothing else helps, consider that as a Plan B.

None of us on here are experts at drive recovery, usually because it's not something which happens to us often, if at all. But there are some things you could try.

Been recovering disks for 17 years..

@keatah, anything you would suggest to help razlecast?

any tips or tricks, programs or methods she could use?

Been recovering disks for 17 years..

We'll look forward to some expert input then Keatah. Good man.

@razlecast, not so much specific help, but something to consider.

just in the last couple of weeks i have built a PC with just Unix on it (ubuntu 12.04 to be specific) . . .

For what its worth, I did much the same thing on a couple of win xp computers using no more than a Puppy Linux live CD.

It's free, and fast, and fairly easy. I used Puppy version 5.25, but that's been a while.

Booted it up, it ran in RAM, recovered the data, got back out of Puppy and reinstalled the OS. Worked. :-)

Linux pretty much ignores the restrictions imposed by windows. Be careful.

You can start reading about Puppy here: http://www.puppylinux.com/other.htm

Once the Linux route has been tried, and still no luck, we can examine some areas of the disk with a hex editor. Depending what we see will determine next action.

@login123,

doh, thanks for that, i forgot about being able to boot from an ISO cd.

@razlecast

if i understand it correctly, the 120gig drive came out of a laptop and you put it into an external enclosure.

the capacity of it suggests it's about 4 or 5 years old and the fact it was used externally suggests it may have been 'bumped' while plugged in (very common)

i'm thinking the drive itself may of had some physical damage, like the read head hitting the platter surface. which will make data extraction all that much harder.

does the drive make a clicking noise? (another nail in the coffin if it does)