Barracuda XT, Barracuda, Barracuda Green, DiamondMax and other desktop SATA and IDE drives

[sh00bie]

I'm using the File Recovery for WIndows tool to try and get my files off a corrupted drive. (I think the partition info got messed up somehow. 1.5TB drive showing as only 500GB and RAW)

Anway, I do a scan of the drive (which takes hours) and it finds all my files. I then check the files I want to recover, right-click and choose "Recover Marked Files" and it chugs away. However not all of the files seem to be making it over. After it finishes there are still files checked (it unchecks everything it recovered). When I look at the files in the place where I had them recovered to, they're mostly 0-bytes in size and won't open, or they're 12K and won't open.

This is driving me nuts, since I can see in the scan in File Recovery that its showing those files as having a size that appears to be correct for what they are, yet nothing's getting copied during the recovery!

Am I doing something wrong? Why is this happening??

There's obviously tons of files, but if I had to make a guess on what I see, the majority (not all, but the majority) of the files appear to be relatively recent files (either made or modified recently). Does this have something to do with the messed up partition?

How can I fix things? What's my path?

[sh00bie]

Anyone? Thoughts?

[Grim0x]

Shoobie I want you to know that i've seen your post, and I have some ideas.

But I am SHUTTING DOWWWN.

Had an exam this morning, only had ONE HOUR of sleep over the course of the next.

I'm subscribing to your post - I'll hit u up later.

[sh00bie]

Thanks, I eagerly await your response!

And meanwhile, hopefully there's more than one person on Seagate's forums that is knowledgeable.

[AlanM]

One thing I can tell you is that other users on this forum have mentioned other data recovery programs.  If you do a search for related terms, you might find some others you can try - maybe one will succeed where File Recovery has so far failed.  

[sh00bie]

Perhaps the root of the whole problem (no pun intended) is the corrupted partition table? How could I go about fixing the partition table?

I think the problem with not getting back some of the files is that there's this whacko partition splitting down the middle. There's roughly 620GB worth of data on the drive, but the only partition showing is 468GB. So my novice guess is that fixing the partition will open up that extra 150GB of data. Yes? No?

[Grim0x]

Hi again shoobie. Thanks much for understanding - I really had to get some rest, I was starting to look like a product of the sci-fi channel. Your suspicion is correct - I've ran into similar situations and what is likely the issue is that the partition is corrupted (not the data per se) but more specifically, the partition table HEADER. Some time ago, my 500GB WD got reduced to a size of 128GB, thanks to my version of XP (pre sp1) not being able to handle 500Gb, Trying to access the drive as a 128GB volume, and hence making alterations to the drive. The data could be seen with recovery utilities - but they all came over with only a few bytes (if any) and just made windows show up an empty dos (emulation) prompt if you tried to open them. AIUI, its the partition's record of the drive geometry that was messed up. Now I suspect this to be your problem because the partition did not DISSAPEAR, it shrank - and that means it was resized for some reason, rather than the rest of the partition data cut off, or something like that. THE SOLUTION, I shall send to you via PM - its the only program i've found so far, that will do what needs to be done. ie - rather than recovery the files - look at the partition information, and correct any errors in the header, ect. I'll PM it to you, as we don't allow hotlinking here, and I have a direct link, rather than a HTML page/file with the link. So, check your private messages (a mail icon to the top right)

[sh00bie · Accepted solution]

Problem solved. Had to correct the partition table on the drive. Once corrected, it started behaving like a good 1.5TB drive again, and I was able to recover my files.

[dr_ad]

plz i need the software too. thx.

[frito1]

I would be extremely grateful if anyone could give the name of what you used to repair your partition table, as i had the same problem.