Html5 Litten Com How To Fix External Disk Drive Suddenly Bec

Unknown Kadath
How To Fix: External Disk Drive James Litten has been

Suddenly Became RAW doing computer stuff for
over 30 years.
Currently researching
Posted on May 1st, 2013 by James Litten
Algorithmic Processes of Social
Systems Theory, Luhmann flavored
How To Fix: External Disk Drive Suddenly (communicative)
Became RAW Available for all kinds of freelance
work.
DISCLAIMER: These examples use techniques that I actually employ in the real world to
deal with real problems. They might be wrong or dangerous. They might be inefficient. If Shop Related Products
you try them yourself, it might cause damage or irreparable loss. I take no responsibility
for anything you do based on my examples or the information that I provide here.
THIS POST IS OUTDATED

THERE IS AN UPDATED VERSION OF THIS POST HERE LG Electronics 8X USB
http://html5.litten.com/updated-how-to-fix-external-disk-drive- 2.0 Ultra Slim Portabl
suddenly-became-raw/
$26.94
(1944)
open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com
A common and befuddling problem with computers is the sudden and
seemingly inexplicable disappearance of an external hard drive that has
LG Electronics 8X USB
been functioning properly. It can be a breathtaking experience to 2.0 Super Multi Ultra
suddenly be told that your data, often irreplaceable pictures and
$26.75
documents, might be gone forever.
(1135)
As with many similar situations in life the appropriate response is

Search Amazon Go
Dont panic. When approached sensibly and carefully, the situation
can be resolved and the data saved more times than not. Here we will Ads by Amazon
look at the causes, fixes and preventative measures for instances

involving external drives being used with Windows XP and Windows
Vista/7. Can you solve this
puzzle?
Error Messages
Common error messages associated with the sudden inability to access
an external hard disk drive.
Contact Me
Windows XP Windows 7 Skype live:james_4345
DO NOT FORMAT THE DRIVE
Recent Posts
When attempting to access the drive in Windows you may see a Example of a WordPress
Website Hack Attack
message asking you to format the drive DO NOT FORMAT THE DRIVE
You need to format the disk in drive before you can use it.
Alarmism and Super Intelligent
AI Vs Humans
Do you want to format it?
UPDATED How To Fix: External
Disk Drive Suddenly Became
Another error that you may see when trying to access the drive in RAW
Windows from a program or the command line is
Another HTML Game Using
This volume does not contain a recognized file system. Please make Only Web Standards
sure that all required file system drivers are loaded and that the
An HTML Game Using Only
volume is not corrupted.
Web Standards
Attempting to run chkdsk in an attempt to repair the problem will give

an error also Search
chkdsk can not be run on the drive
Search
The type of the file system is RAW.
CHKDSK is not available for RAW drives.
The Disk Management window shows the partition as either RAW or
without a filesystem type.
Properties of the drive show that both used and free

spaces are 0 byte in size for the raw drive
Windows XP Windows 7
What does RAW partition mean
A RAW filesystem simply means that it is a filesystem that is not
recognized by Windows. Therefore all the available filesystem drivers
are unable to mount the filesystem as a drive. This often happens when
the records determining the filesystem type or location on the disk are
damaged or corrupted, usually the partition table or the boot sector.
Since Windows sees no filesystem in the partition, it prompts you to
format it in order to create a filesystem on it. DO NOT FORMAT IT.
Why does it happen and how to avoid it

The most common cause of external hard drives suddenly becoming
RAW drives is if they are disconnected from a computer without using
the Safely Remove Hardware option. This can happen in many ways
such as a power failure, unplugging the drive from the USB port or from
its AC adapter, a problem with the computer that causes it to
temporarily disconnect the USB hubs and many more circumstances can
lead to this occurring.
Always use Safely remove hardware to disconnect the drive. Left click
the icon on the taskbar, select the device from the menu, and wait for
the confirmation message.
THERE IS AN UPDATED VERSION OF THIS POST HERE
http://html5.litten.com/updated-how-to-fix-external-disk-drive-
How do you fix it

For this example, I chose the most heavily damaged disk with this issue
that I could find in my collection of damaged disks. It has both of the
most common problems. The partition table is corrupted and the boot
sector of the main partition is also scrambled. The pictures of error
messages above all came from this drive. The pictures of the repair
process below are from the actual repair of this drive. Some images are
from a virtual machine (simply to make it easier to get the screenshots)
and some are from an actual desktop. This is a real repair not a
manufactured example.
Before proceeding beyond this point, you need to be aware of the

risks involved. If the problem with the drive is not simply a logical error
but is a manifestation of physical damage then the more you use it and
try to repair, the worse the damage may become. To minimize the risks,
the drive can be taken to a professional who is experienced in this type
of repair. The drive should not be making strange clicking or beeping
noises. That means that there is definitely physical damage and it
should be sent to a facility with the proper tools and environment to
repair/recover it since trying to repair it as described in this post can
make that situation worse. If you wish to continue on your own there
are three important rules to remember.
1. Computer problems are variable. You may very well come up with a
different situation than I outline below. Make sure that you stop and
think things through carefully when the process becomes different than
I describe.
2. You DO NOT WANT TO WRITE ANYTHING TO THE RAW DRIVE

except for the repaired MBR and repaired Boot Sector if necessary. Any
other writing can overwrite data on the drive that you would want to
keep.
3. This repair does not apply to solid-state drives (SSD). They are very
different than normal drives and can erase important data on a RAW
partition just by connecting power to them.
Do you want to recover anything extra

important first?
This step is optional and does not always work. EDIT 1/22/2013
It can put your mind at ease and make the process less stressful if you
can successfully and quickly make copies of the most important files on
the drive. After making sure that these files are safely copied to
another drive, you can continue with repairing the drive with a much
more relaxed demeanor and thus be less likely to make a mistake.
Often you can access the data on the missing drive by booting with a
Linux LiveCD. The hard disk drive being used in this example is too
damaged to do this but there is another article with instructions here
that uses a drive that while not visible in Windows was accessible with
a Linux LiveCD.
Repair partition table and boot sector

In order to repair the most common problems that cause an external

disk to suddenly become RAW we will use a PartedMagic Linux boot CD
and one of the tools included on it called TestDisk. Both of these items
are free and I urge you to donate to them if you are helped by their use
and have the ability to make a donation.
This method allows us to work on the drive without attempting to

mount it and gives us more direct access to it than trying to fix it in
Windows.
First make a bootable CD or USB stick of PartedMagic. Instructions can
be found here.
Boot the computer that has the bad drive connected to it with the
PartedMagic CD/USB that you made. A menu will pop up, please select
1. Default Settings (Runs from RAM)
When it finishes booting you will notice that it looks kind of like a
Windows desktop. The button in the lower left works like the START
button in Windows XP and allows you to select and run various
programs or shutdown the computer. To make things easy, Ill just refer
to this as the START button.
Click on the Terminal button down near the START button (It has a
picture of a monitor on it) and type
testdisk
and press enter.
TestDisk is a console application so you have to use your keyboard to

interact with it instead of your mouse.
Choose No Log and hit enter
Make sure that your external disk is highlighted
Choose Proceed and hit enter
Select Intel and hit enter (there is a slight chance that the partition is
EFI GPT if the drive is 2TB or greater in size and at the bottom of this
screen it says that Hint: EFI GPT was detected. If that is the case,
select EFI GPT instead and try that.)
Select Analyse and hit enter
The partition data looks incorrect (an explanation of why is beyond the
scope of this article)
Select Quick Search and hit enter
Say Y if it asks if the disk was made in Vista/Win7 (even if it was

made in XP say yes)
Now the Quick Search will run
When the Quick Search completes, we see one partition (if you only see
the option to CONTINUE at the bottom of the screen press ENTER one
time to continue to the screen that you need to be at).
Lets look at the data on that partition press

P
and you should see a list of files/folders in the partition.
Hmmm This looks like a bunch of diagnostic tools but not our missing
data. Well need to look further. Press
Q
to go back a screen and then press
enter
To get to this screen, select DEEPER SEARCH and press enter.
Naturally, the Deeper Search takes longer than the Quick Search
When the Deeper Search completes we now see two partitions. The one
we saw after the quick search and another one.
Select the new partition and press
P
to see the files/folders and now we see the data we want to make
visible again.
Press
Q
to go back a screen and then press enter to get to this screen.
Select WRITE and press enter in order to write our new partition table
to the drive.
DO NOT WRITE A NEW PARTITION TABLE IF YOU DID NOT SEE
YOUR FILES/FOLDERS That means the proper partition table was not
found and you will have to try a different technique to recover your
data.
Press Y to confirm that you want to write the new partition table.
As I mentioned at the start of this repair, this disk also has corruption
in the boot sector of the partition that we are trying to make visible
again. When this is the case TestDisk will stop at this point and ask
you to fix it before it finishes writing the new partition table. If the
backup boot sector is good (as in this case) simply choose BACKUP BS
and press enter. In the event that the backup boot sector is also bad
then choose REBUILD BS.
Press Y to confirm the boot sector repair
Then choose QUIT and press enter
Regardless of whether a boot sector repair is required or not, you will

end up at this screen where all you can do is press enter. Then hit Q
until you are out of TestDisk.
Now remove the PartedMagic CD and shutdown the computer

START>SHUTDOWN and then try booting it into Windows to see if the
drive is now visible.
Here are the results for the drive used in this example
Backup important files and run chkdsk
Now you should make backups of all important files on the drive in case
it goes bad again and then run chkdsk to fix any other filesystem errors
that may still exist.
After backing up important files, right-click the disk in Windows Explorer
and choose PROPERTIES. Go to the TOOLS tab and click CHECK
NOW. Check both options and click START.

Tags: data recovery, undelete files, undelete.recover lost files,

windows file recovery, windows repair
This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 1st, 2013 at 7:59 pm and is filed under Data Recovery, Windows File
Recovery, windows repair. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and
pings are currently closed.
353 Responses to How To Fix: External Disk Drive

Suddenly Became RAW
Lucy January 13th, 2013 at 7:06 pm
Worked! Thank you so much!
JP January 14th, 2013 at 4:23 am
I followed every step until the reboot but I still cant access the disk.
The file system is still RAW. My external disk drive is 500GB Seagate
Free Agent Go Flex Drive. I hope you can help me with this.
admin January 14th, 2013 at 4:32 am
Hi JP
Here is a similar situation that I worked on with a 1TB external

GoFlex
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/topic481048.html
See if what we tried there helps you.

James
JP January 14th, 2013 at 5:04 am
Thanks, James! Ill look at the link youve posted and Ill let you know
if it works for me. Maybe, it didn;t work because I just downloaded
the TestDisk 6.14 tool from the web and run it in Windows instead of
booting it with PartedMagic.
JH January 14th, 2013 at 4:09 pm
James, a similar situation with a 1T SimpleSave MD1000h on my HP

Pavilion dv-7 laptop.
At the step where the deeper search is being conducted, the window
displays the following message as the deeper search continues
(currently at 64% complete):
Check_FAT: Cant read FAT boot sector.

Invalid boot sector.
O D FAT16 <32m 15847 253 53 271915 9 48 1880682044
FAT 16<32m 15847 253 53 271915 9 48 1880682044
My issue is that W7 sees this drive, but cannot read it because it

thinks it is in RAW format. Testdisk shows it as still being NTFS, but
with this FAT16 issue popping up during deeper search.
I believe all the files are still on the drive so the goal is to repair
without a full erase and reformat of the SimpleSave drive.
Thanks in advance for your help,

jh
admin January 14th, 2013 at 5:05 pm
Hi JH
It would be very difficult to help you repair a problem like that in the
comments of a blog post.
You can try posting the problem in the internal hardware subforum
at bleepingcomputer.com
I do many repairs there and either myself or someone else would

probably be able to help you.
James
JH January 14th, 2013 at 5:15 pm
Will do thanks!
DianeNemea January 16th, 2013 at 8:28 am
I am currently running the quick search but it is very slow.

Disk /dev/sdd 1000 GB / 931 GiB CHS 953869 64 32
Analyze cylinder 305/953868: 00%
Read error at 305/2/1 (lbs=620608)

It continues to go up, but I
cant tell if it is working normally. Should I just go to bed and see
what happens in the AM?
Thanks,
DN
DianeNemea January 16th, 2013 at 7:43 pm
The deeper search found nothing on the drive. I have now the option
to. A. Add partition. L. Load backup. Enter to continue. drive.
Raj January 16th, 2013 at 8:08 pm
Where do i find the PartedMagic Linux boot CD and TestDisk CD ?

Please help , its urgent
Raj January 16th, 2013 at 8:29 pm
Thanks i figured out.

No partition found or selected for recovery

I am copying over my files, then reformat?
So, to be clear, I can mount the drive and see and copy the contents,
but the testdisk data recovery tool found no partitions with either the
quick scan or the deeper scan.
Hi DianeNemea
It is too difficult to assist with a repair in the blog comments but

from what youve posted so far, it sounds like there may be some
physical damage like bad sectors since you got a read error and the
problem may be too serious to fix with this technique.
You could try recovering the data.

PhotoRec is free and included in PartedMagic but will not give you
filenames or directory structure.
Restorer Ultimate has a free demo to see if it will work but you must
pay to recover the data. However, it often gets the filenames and
directory structure.
EDIT:Just saw your comment on being able to mount it so you can

recover it by copying the files from the mounted drive.
lavoo January 22nd, 2013 at 4:25 pm
Ive encountered two issues while attempting to recover the data for
backup before I re-partition the HDD which keeps prompting need to
format.
(1) At the stage where I could view the folder in the bad HDD,when
trying to right-click copy, nothing pops up for me to select copy.
That is, nothing happens when I right click the mouse.
Searched the top menus and couldnt find any copy function either
except for a copy plug-ins, which I doubt is the right move.
(2) Cant seem to read one of the external drives which I am trying to
recover data from.
Ive sent you an e-mail with screenshots for better visualization of
my issues.
Hoping you have the time to help with this.
Greatly appreciated!
admin January 22nd, 2013 at 4:56 pm
The step that you are stuck on is optional and I guess I should make
that more clear in the blog post. That step does not work for people
about half of the time.
Sorry for the confusion.
James
lavoo January 22nd, 2013 at 4:31 pm
Some additional information :-

EXT HDD make : WD20EARX 2.0 TB (SATA/64MB Cache)
Laptop : Asus UX21E
Thanks.
mechi January 25th, 2013 at 4:41 pm
Hi, I ran analyze and it said 2 primary fat32 and all zeros
I did quick and deeper scans both with no results. I did see a invalid
fat boot sector message
after all attempts it finally displayed No partition found or selected

for recovery
Hi Mechi
That means this technique may not be for your situation.
It is very difficult to troubleshoot these issues in a blog comment

thread. You should contact a professional data recovery company.
If you do not want to do that, myself and others often answer

questions about these types of problems at the
bleepingcomputer.com forum and there are other forums.
James
mechi January 26th, 2013 at 4:07 am
James, thanks for the reply, I will surely praise you for your
responsiveness. I got tied up and could not get back until now after I
first checked my email. I will try the bleepingcomputer site above the
next day or so.
I have to say, I was discouraged a little when I did not see files
trying analyze but I know it all depends on what is wrong as to the
fix.
The plus is I did see some of your entries on the other site and can
tell you are dedicated, I KNOW we will get there. (at least your
software did see the drive! thats progress from what Ive tried)
Hadhirah January 27th, 2013 at 10:42 am
Before I click the quick search, it shows the partition and below it
say no partition is rebootable. What does that means? I really need
your help!
Terry January 28th, 2013 at 12:23 am
Running into problems similar to both Hadhirah and mechi, having run
everything (quick search, deeper search, rebuild BS) in both
default(not changing anything File type:FAT16>32) and NTFS I still
get bad boot sectors, no partitions found, and no partition
rebootable. A few times Ive gotten Cant Find Cluster Size
I can though initially see two separate FAT 16 partitions though

theyre under the unbootable category.
Hi Terry
That means this technique may not be for your situation.
It is very difficult to troubleshoot these issues in a blog comment

thread since I need to establish a high level of situational awareness
in order to give safe and proper advice.
You should contact a professional data recovery company.
If you do not want to do that, myself and others often answer

questions about these types of problems at the
bleepingcomputer.com forum and there are other forums. It is much
easier to gather data about your setup and situation that way than
to try and do it here.
Actually, problem resolved. I thought something was fishy when I

saw 2 disks that were pretty much identical (my SSDs) I thought one
was my old HDD that had failed and was pretty much just trying to
recover files that werent there. Luckily my HDD decided to kick in
long enough for me to grab 95% of the files I was trying to recover.
In the process of doing all this though, I found out how to fix my SSD
that wasnt initialized, so thanks! Awesome guide by the way!
When trying to load up Parted Magic, it hit my Sata_2 that hadnt

been working and kept ramming a wall over and over for about 10
min. It was the failing drive. You might mention this in your guide if
you can edit it, up to you though. Frustrating that I spent half a day
trying to fix a problem I didnt really have. Learned a neat trick in the
process though, thanks to you!
Tim January 29th, 2013 at 4:58 pm
Hi, Im interested in using your method, I followed the instructions

precisely and recieved the following:
Mounting PMAGIC_2012_12_25.SQFS mount: wrong fs type, bad

option, bad superblock on /dev/loop1
Missing codepage or helper program, or other error
In some cases useful info is found in syslog try dmesg : tail or so
Mounting //sqfs_disk/PMAGIC_2012_12_25.SQFS failed
pmagic does not boot, where did I go wrong and how do I get it to
boot successfuly? Please help
admin February 2nd, 2013 at 5:17 pm
Hi Tim
That may be a badly burned CD/DVD, try another and let me know if
you still have this issue.
James
Michelle January 30th, 2013 at 9:17 pm
Hello, I have a WD Mybook 1tb external hard drive that has worked
fine for over a year until this past Saturday we plugged it in to access
our karaoke music and windows 7 asked to format the disk as shown
above I told my husband not to format but in all the confusion I think
he might have..I did a recovery scan to see if the data and files
where still on the external hard drive and they are now how do I
recover the data off my external hard drive. We have over 200000
karaoke songs that we use with our karaoke software please help..I
can not afford all the data recovery software programs that are out
there and I know there is a way I can do it myself with some help.
admin February 2nd, 2013 at 5:18 pm
Hi Michelle
What step did you get to above before having difficulty?
James
Melissa February 2nd, 2013 at 11:59 pm

Melissa February 2nd, 2013 at 11:59 pm
I didnt find 2 partition after the deeper search, and my file format
was in NTFS. What should I do to recover my files then?
admin February 3rd, 2013 at 12:51 am
Hi Melissa
Im not sure that I understand but if it found just one partition did
you look in it by pressing P like it says in the example? When you
look in the partition it found, do you see the files/folders there?
Often external drives only have one partition. Let me know if Im

misunderstanding the question
James
Melissa February 3rd, 2013 at 1:26 am
I didnt have the FATA32 like you have shown after the quick search,
instead I have HPFS-NTFS. Even so, I did deeper search with HPFS-
NTFS. Though, there in only one partition. I did press the P to see if
there is file in there after deeper search, and there are files & folders
in there. After that, I try to WRITE new partition, but it didnt went
into the BOOT BS page, it went straight into indicating that reboot
is required for change to work. I guess everything didint really
went the way you indicated, so I am not sure what did went wrong.
I hope this is clear enough for you to figure out what have went
wrong
BTW, after i reboot it, I still cannot read the files
Thanks Melissa, that is clearer.

Your disk should look different from the example in this post. It was
just used to illustrate the technique.
I certainly understand that it can be confusing. I do this all the time

but most people never need to do anything like this
At this point, you should try the section above called Do you want
to recover anything extra important first?. It involves seeing if
the files are visible in PartedMagics File Manager. Often when you
can see the files in TestDisk like you did but cant see them when
you boot into Windows, they are visible in Linux (PartedMagics File
Manager).
Here is a link to the instructions
http://fixit.litten.com/linuxfilecopy.html
You can then copy the files to someplace else.
If it does not work, then well need to arrange a better place to

discuss this as it becomes too complicated to do in the comments of
the blog post.
James

I am trying to use the other method But I was not able to mount
my bad device Is there any way to do it?
Melissa
Now it gets too complicated for working in the blog comments. Since
you can see the files/folders in TestDisk, you can check out these
instructions that I posted for someone else.
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/topic480044.html/page__view__findpost__p__2934440
If that does not help, you can start a new post there and either
myself or someone else will try to help you further.
James
Melissa February 3rd, 2013 at 4:01 pm
Thank you so much! it worked perfectly! I owe you my life
I do have a couple questions I post on the wall.
Ielle February 5th, 2013 at 5:07 am
Good day Sir,
I tried recovering my files through the parted magic file manager, I
was copying a folder to another drive but halfway through, I suddenly
encountered a copying error. When I went back to the folder to try to
copy the files again, the folder which holds the files I was trying to
backup are already empty and I could not see even the other folders
which I did not copy. I tried copying another file and encountered the
same problem. Can you guide me on this one? Are my files already
lost or just that I could not view them in parted magic anymore?
By the way my bad drive is a 1Tb seagate storage
admin February 5th, 2013 at 4:20 pm
Hi Ielle
How far in the tutorial have you gotten? Have you tried looking at
the drive with TestDisk yet?
James
newb February 5th, 2013 at 1:18 pm
Dear James Litten, firstly you are helping many people with your
post, heartly congrats. I also have the same problem of my HD
(Seagate 1TB external) being converted to RAW format. And I have
950Gb of personnal data .
I followed the above post of your, but after I enter Analyse(Picture
6), I am not able to see any partitions listed as in Picture 7 above.
Instead I got a message Partition: Read error.
Can you please help me in proceeding.
Thanks in advance.
Cheers,
Newb.
Dear James, I would like to say .. your post

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/topic481048.html came
helpful for me.. I will inform you once I complete my 950 GB of Data
(hopefully).
Cheers,
newb.
Hi Newb
Let me know if you run into any difficulty.
James
Ielle February 5th, 2013 at 10:54 pm
Hi I havent tried the test disk yet Will let you know about it after
Neeta February 6th, 2013 at 3:30 pm
Hello James,
I have a problem here. Your tutorial suggests Boot the computer
that has the bad drive connected to it with the PartedMagic CD/USB
that you made.
What can I do, as I do not have access to that computer anymore to

which my external hard drive was connected?
Can I use it with my laptop?
Please help me here.
Thanks in advance,
Neeta
admin February 7th, 2013 at 2:14 am
Hi Neeta
Yes, you can use your laptop. Here is an example where I used a
laptop for a very difficult recovery
http://html5.litten.com/windows-file-recovery-series-part-4-recover-
files-from-a-bad-hard-drive/
James
Vijai Balaji February 6th, 2013 at 6:17 pm
Dear Mr.Litten,
I followed all the steps carefully. My external hard drive has only one
partition but I did a deeper search anyways. Once it got completed I
was not able to find any files in the partition. Should I go ahead and
WRITE the partition to the drive? Would it recover the files or not
being able to see any of the files in the partition mean that the data
is already lost? If this method wouldnt work, could please suggest
another method to recover all my data? Thanks in advance.
Really appreciate what you do here.
Vijai
Hi Vijai
No, you should not choose WRITE unless you see your files. If you
did it anyway, it wont do much damage. At this point you should try
a paid option like GetDataBack or Restorer Ultimate or Zero
Assumption Recovery. There are others out there too. These products
have a demo. If they can find your files, they will then ask you to pay
for the full version (usually less than $100 US).
Hope this helps

James
Ielle February 6th, 2013 at 6:28 pm
Hey James, I tried the testdisk steps however I was not able to the
files in the affected folders, I posted more details about my problem
in the forum, heres the link
hopefully you can help me out.
Thanks!
Dave February 10th, 2013 at 3:55 pm
Great writeup. Now if you had one for SSD drives that now show as
RAW with 0 space that would be greatly appreciated.
Cy February 11th, 2013 at 12:37 am
Hi! I am very interested on how to fix the external hard drive but I
believed that I cannot do it.
My scenario was, I have my WD Elements 1023 500 GB external hard

drive for a year now. It worked perfectly fine then when I tried using
it yesterday, it is successfully installed in my computer but it cannot
be shown in My Computer. It is shown in Disk Management as Disk
1 Not Initialized, Unknown 2048 GB Unallocated. I am afraid that my
files are lost. How can I fix this?
I know that this is not the right thread but as I searched for the
whole day and I dont even have a sleep just to find the solution for
this. I hope you can help me. I have my whole life on it. My work
and everything. I really appreciate it.
And I even tried to recover files using recovery system software but it
cannot even be detected the external drive so it is useless.
Hi Cy
It seems odd that your 500GB drive would appear in Disk

Management as a 2TB (2048GB) drive. Are you sure that you are
seeing it in Disk Management or do you have another 2TB drive
attached that you might be seeing?
James
Amanda February 11th, 2013 at 4:22 pm
James,
Ive been following the steps but very early in the process its thrown
me an error that Im not sure how to proceed with. In analyze it gave
me a bad relative sector error, which I found odd as it is fresh from
the manufacture. I skipped ahead a bit and started using the deeper
search. That has thrown me an error of Invalid NTFS or EXFAT boot,
which makes sense given the trouble Im having formating the blank
drive. But of course Ive no clue how to proceed. Any help
appreciated.
Thanks
Amanda
Hi Amanda
I dont understand what you are trying to do. If it is a new blank
drive, this technique should not help you recover anything.
James
Dear James,
I am in need of your help :),
I will explain you the difficulties I am facing.
1) In PartionMagic I continue from last time, I was able to tranfer

few GBs of data (50/950). Next day I was not able to MOUNT my
950GB hard disk at all. When I click on MOUNT option, it will be
disabled for few seconds then turns to mount option while other drive
can be mounted at the same time. (I tried with all USB ports
available 3*)
2) Then I tried in Windows7.
a)well my hard disk(950GB)is detected and I am only able to see the

folders, if I try to enter them (error: The request could not be
performed becoz of an I/O error.)with heading(Location is not
available).
b) And fortunetly if I see (try to copy)files(example : *.mp3/*.mp4)

(which are not in any folder) I recieve [An unexpected error is keeping
you from copying file. ERROR0x8007045D: The request could not
I/O device error).
Please try to help me out :), in the mean while I will be trying to
extract my data hopefully I will not lose any of them
Thanks in advance James.
Cheers.
Hi Newb
You may want to look at the SMART data for that drive and see if
there is some signs of damage being detected. In PartedMagic
double-click the DISK HEALTH icon on the desktop and then select
the drive. Here is an post about reading the results
http://html5.litten.com/accessing-and-assessing-a-hard-drives-s-m-
a-r-t-data/
James
Heinz February 15th, 2013 at 1:30 pm
Hi James!
First of all I applaud you for the help you have given people here and
in your forums! After reading nearly every reply in this thread I can
already see that youve helped a lot of people.
I have a Buffalo HD-PCTU3 1Tb external hard drive. I have tried to

access it using the techniques written here and I am stuck at the part
where I have to Write partition structure to disk. When i press
Write it tells me to reboot for the change to take effect. I checked
my disks boot sector recovery and it says:
Disk /dev/sdb 1000 GB / 931 GiB CHS 121601 255 63

Partition Start End Size in sectors
5 L HPFS NTFS 0 1 2 121600 254 63 1953520001 [TERA-HEINZ]
Boot sector
Status: OK
Backup boot sector

Status: OK
Sectors are identical.
A valid NTFS Boot sector must be present in order to access

any data; even if the partition is not bootable.
At this point, Im not quite sure what to do next. I can see my files,
but i do not currently have an extra 1Tb hard disk to store them in,
and also i cant mount my hard disk.
Thanks for your help!:)

Hi Heinz
Thanks for the kind words.

If writing the new partition table still does not make the drive visible
in Windows then it is likely a physical problem or filesystem problem
that is not addressed by this technique.
You should copy the important files from it to another drive using the
screen where you can see the files.
If you dont have enough free space on other drives right now, copy
the most important files that you do have space for and then
disconnect the drive and put it aside until you have space to get the
rest of the files.
James
Heinz February 16th, 2013 at 1:04 am
Alright, I guess thats the only way then. Thanks for the help
James!:)
Hi Heinz
I Wish I had a better answer but it is based on my experience. Ive

had this technique work for me fixing clients hard drives many times
(maybe even more than 100 times, I lost count long ago). When it
works, it just works. When it does not work then something unusual
is happening and you need to focus on the job being a data
recovery job instead of a data repair job. In that case, you need a
separate location to save the recovered data.
If you get another drive or free space on another drive or flash drive
that you want to copy some or all of the data to, let me know if you
have any difficulties.
James
alan February 16th, 2013 at 1:58 am
James
I wanted to thank you and saw the comment you posted when I
started typing mine.
You said When it works, it just works. and that is what happened
now to my raw Seagate 2TB external drive that had all my videos on
it. Everything was the same except I had 1 partition instead of two.
Everything is working now.
Thanks
Dear James,
I looked at S.M.A.R.T Data, I am getting an error saying Cannot

retrieve SMART DATA. Device open failed or device did not return an
IDENTIFY DEVICE structure.
now how to proceed.
Hopes are getting low to extract data from my hard disk
Thanks again
Cheers.
Hi Newb
There are a few things you can try to get it to read the SMART data.
One of these is probably what you have already done.
1. Boot into PartedMagic with the drive attached. Try Disk Health.
2. Attach the drive AFTER booting into PartedMagic and wait for the
drive to be detected. Try Disk Health.
3. Use the Windows version of GSmartControl (Disk Health). Try

booting into Windows both with the drive attached and attaching
after booting.
http://gsmartcontrol.berlios.de/home/index.php/en/Downloads
Hope this helps

James
rwin February 20th, 2013 at 7:00 am
Hi james,
i have a different situation in this case, but same problem, my laptop
drive became RAW after i copy data from ubuntu to windows,
i used 2 OS(windows and ubuntu) in one drive, when i used ubuntu
as my OS, i wanted to copy data from ubuntu partition to windows
partition(its because my windows os cant detect ubuntu partition),
then i open terminal, wrote command line to see what partition are
deteced in ubuntu OS, windows partition detected as SDA..,
so, with that information, i run cp command to copy data to
windows partition, afterthat, i switch my os to windows,
but when i open the partition which is copied data from ubuntu, my
partition became raw
did i can follow your steps to fix my problem??
i really need your help james, ive saw you commented on every
comment, i applaud for that, there are many people helped, and sorry
for my bad english.
Hi Rwin
I need a lot more information to diagnose your situation. That cant
be done in the comment thread of a blog post.
Based on what you describe, maybe you could look at the boot sector
of the partition containing the Windows data partition and see if
there is a problem there.
Run TestDisk and get to the screen that lists your disks.
Make sure that your data disk is highlighted
Choose Proceed and hit enter
It should automatically have Intel or EFI GPT selected (if not, select
Intel) hit enter
Select Advanced and hit enter
Make sure that the problematic partition is highlighted and
Select Boot and hit enter
Select Boot and hit enter
See if it says the boot sector and backup boot sector are OK and
identical.
Thats about all I can do here. Hope it helps.

James
Dear James,
I tried GSmartcontrol in windows7 as given in 3rd option in your

previous post, but the result was same result was seen Cannot
retreive SMART Data.
Please let me know,if there are any other risky steps which can be
tried out !!
Sorry to trouble you for prolonged period.
Thanks for your extended and extra suggestions.
Cheers.
Dr S Vijay Kumar February 21st, 2013 at 8:21 am
Sir, i had a similar complaint with my hard disc with two partition. I
gave my HD for data recovery where the professional formatted it and
has recovered a partition which was not actually RAW, but couldnt
access the other partition which was RAW and says that its cluster is
defective, and it keeps asking for formatting.
I want to know if i can recover data from it and what my options are
? I need that partition which is very important to me. Kindly advice.
ange February 21st, 2013 at 8:21 am
Hi, i think i have a similar problem but its shown differently on my

laptop (when it first switches on it goes to a black screen with
error: filesystem not found grub rescue: do i still go through with
those steps ?!
thanks
ange
rwin February 26th, 2013 at 9:46 am
Hi james, thanks for your reply, ive do a deeper search, but my

partition detected as invalid NTFS or EXFAT boot, what does it
mean??
Steve Francis March 3rd, 2013 at 2:46 pm
Thanks for posting this.
After a power supply interruption to my laptop, XP and Ubuntu would

no longer recognise an extended NTFS partition containing all my
precious data files. Initial attempts to recover just led to error
messages reporting bad sectors.
I used the above method to retrieve them. Thanks for blogging!
I should point out that two things were key for me:
1. In answer to the question Should TestDisk search for partition
created under Vista or later?, I had to answer Y. If I answered N,
TestDisk would find the lost partition but that partition would not
appear when rebooting into XP.
2. I had to use the XP CD-ROM to run Recovery Console and then run
the command: chkdsk e: /r
The chkdsk process took 14 hours! At the end of it though, I rebooted
and XP recognised the partition and the files on it.
Needless to say, I immediately did a back up of the data files.
Stagz March 3rd, 2013 at 4:56 pm
Well all went well after deep scan. I seen all my files that were on
there, so that is good, but when following the instructions to back
out of that menu screen by pressing Q then hit enter so i can select
write it comes up with a message saying no partition is available,
and my only option is to quit, I do not have the write option like in
the picture you have. Am I missing something?
admin March 3rd, 2013 at 5:29 pm
Hi Stagz
There may be too much damage to the file system for this technique.
If you go back to the screen that you got after Deeper Search and
saw your files/folders listed, there are instructions at the bottom of
that screen that tell you how to copy the files/folders that you select
to another drive.
Here is an example of how to use that screen to copy files to a

different location (in PartedMagic, youll need to mount a disk to copy
files to. Many prefer to run TestDisk in Windows for this.)
You will need enough free space on another drive to hold the files
that you wish to recover.
Im assuming that you are running TestDisk in Windows. If not, the

instructions are basically the same but you will need to mount a
drive.
You should see some basic directions at the bottom of the screen in
TestDisk about how to copy the files to another location.
Some simple navigation instructions.

To see the contents of a folder, highlight it and press the right arrow
key on the keyboard.
To go back up a directory highlight the line that has two dots
..
It should be the second entry in the list.
I like to do a test first and try to copy just one file or folder to see if
it works.
Select a file or folder that youd like to try copying by highlighting it.
Press the colon key on your keyboard to select it
:
and then press upper case C to copy the selected file or folder
SHIFT-C
Now it wants to know where to copy the file to.
It will automatically default to saving them in the directory where
TestDisk is being run from.
Highlight the second line which is .. (two dots) and press the right
arrow key and it will take you up a level.
You can keep selecting the .. line and eventually youll get to the top
of the hierarchy which will list all of the connected disks.
From there you can navigate to the location that you wish to copy
the recovered files to. (If you have any difficulty navigating, let us
know.)
When you are inside the folder that you want to copy recovered files
to, choose the top line which is one dot
.
Then press
SHIFT-C
and it should copy the file there.
Leave everything open and look in the Windows Explorer to verify
that the file was copied. If it is there, go back to the TestDisk
window and select more files and folders that you want to copy.
When you choose to copy them it will automatically put them in the
location that you already selected.
James
Sylvia March 4th, 2013 at 6:12 am
Hi James, Made the bootable CD but because my Win7 is part of

corporation property, it would not boot off the CD something about
interactive logon failing. I guess that means the logon GUI does not
work with Linux. Home laptop is Win 8. I am still navigating that so
not sure how to apply this. All I want to do is to remove two folders
of files from the 1TB WD My Passport that was in the middle of
writing an export file from Lightroom when it crashed. I think it has
writing an export file from Lightroom when it crashed. I think it has
to do with the fact that the USB 2 cable next to the disk was always
a little loose. Can you help please? Thanks
admin March 4th, 2013 at 8:02 pm
Hi Sylvia
You may be able to use the Windows version of TestDisk which can
be found here
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Download
James
sulaiman March 5th, 2013 at 10:17 am
Worked! Thank you so much!
Usman Javed March 6th, 2013 at 12:30 am
Hi Admin:
i have a similar problem hope you know the best solution.
i have a portable usb harddisk 640 gb samsung model no
st640lm000. when i connect it using usb cable computer does not
respond to the plug and play so i have to open once my computer
and refresh to show the drives. after a click sound from harddisk it
shows two drives . one which is 249gb which i would like to recover
must, in my computer it only shows the drive icon D: and it donot
allow to open or to right click it goes on hang if i try to open same in
disk managment it does not show the usb drive .i used mini tool
partition wizard to just see whats on my usb it shows the drive with
details as bad hard disk and shows no logical or volume drives. wt
should i do suggest me.
i have tried changing the usb box and cable but nothing happening.
should i consider this technique you shared in this post ?
Regards
Joe March 7th, 2013 at 12:20 pm
Please, READ THIS !!

Just disconnected my Toshiba HDD 350 GB while working, after that
Ive tried to reconnect it again but here is the results:
1- at the first try my laptop is not responding when connect the HDD.
2- at the second try the laptop show usb icon and HDD disk without
storage and unable to open it.
3- at the third try, it asked me to formatting it like at the above pic.
Ive formatted it and got only 1.5 GB!!! :((
please what should i do?? after you mentioned When attempting to

access the drive in Windows you may see a message asking you to
format the drive DO NOT FORMAT THE DRIVE
Please your advice ASAP !
Thanks in advance.
Steve March 8th, 2013 at 11:38 pm
Hi
Just a question about the quick search part, i have a 3tb seagate
drive which i am trying to follow this procedure for and the quick
search part has been running for nearly 24 hours and on the analyse
cylinder line it is showing 277%. Is this normal or should i give up
the ghost and try again.
admin March 9th, 2013 at 1:37 am
Hi Steve
There are a lot of difficulties that occur when trying to use this
technique on drives larger than 2.2TB like your 3TB drive. They either
work without a hitch or get weird like yours is doing. The reason for
this is often because of the way these drives are designed to be
accessible by computers that normally can not access drives larger
than 2.2TB.
You may want to look into paid solutions that offer a free trial that
will scan and then tell you what it can recover. Then you purchase a
key to unlock the recovery portion of the software (usually less than
$100US).
James
Sylvia March 9th, 2013 at 7:19 am
Hi James
Thank you for your suggestion. Tried Windows Version of the
TestDisk and it wont run says cygwin1.dll missing. I am not sure
that I want to go that far with the Windows. So back to Linux I went,
and I only had to go as far as Quick Search to see all my folders.
Tried to write partition table to it then it says to reboot. PMagic
said nothing about the boot sector or any errors therein. So I reboot.
Did not work. Repeated the process several times nothing,
Windows still wont read the external disk. So I tried to copy the
folder that I wanted to save from the disc but the destination
appears a tat dodgy. It writes but I am never able to find it again in
Windows although I wrote it on to desktop. So not sure what is
happening. Tried to copy using the route of the mouted devices but
cannot see the files of the bad external disk. So I gave up. Any other
ideas? Help appreciated. Thanks
Sylvia
Benjamin Jr. Gorospe March 11th, 2013 at 3:51 am
OMG! Thanks to the author! I thought I cannot recover my very

important files anymore! Thank you very much!
Rodney Baptist March 11th, 2013 at 3:54 am
Thanks for the link..saved my data ..thank you once again
Ajay March 12th, 2013 at 8:17 am
Hi James,
I burnt a bootable CD. Restarted computer with CD in the tray with
bad external drive connected. Parted Magic started and I selected
Runs from RAM It started well but after Roots Password is
partedmagic it is stucked at Creating /etc/fstab
It never reached to similar to desktop screen.
Please help.
Hi Ajay
It may be a bad CD that needs to be burned again or it could be that

this version of PartedMagic is not compatible with your computer.
You can try the other options in the startup screen like Live with
default settings 32
James
Stefan March 13th, 2013 at 3:49 am
I used my usb at a public computer and 2 hours later I used it at a

home computer. When I used it at a home computer, I tried
accessing the usb. The usb has only 1 file on it when I tried to use
the usb at home. It had a the name of the file was a black rectangle
with a white circle instead the rectangle a character capital T, not a
normal keyboard T and a capital D. The file was 4000kb, when I tried
to open the file, the error was the specified path cannot be found,
please try again. When I checked properties, it showed that 13.1gb
was used with a remaining 1.80gb. Will I be able to use this method
to recover my files? My files are various types such as excel, pdf,
word. I would be happy to send screen shots if you would be able to
assist me. The drive is a 16gb lexar.
assist me. The drive is a 16gb lexar.
Hi Stefan
This technique is more effective for hard drives than it is for flash
drives. Flash drives have a controller in them that emulates a hard
drive with the data stored on memory chips instead of being read
from platters. Your problem sounds more like an issue with the
controller than corruption of the filesystem.
James
rwin March 17th, 2013 at 4:30 pm
Hi james, thanks for your reply, ive do a deeper search, but my

partition detected as invalid NTFS or EXFAT boot, what does it
mean??
Hi Rwin
It sounds like there is file system damage that this technique does
not address. You should try the following (in order of safest to most
dangerous)
1. Hire a professional recovery service.
2. Try a paid recovery program. Many have a free trial that will
determine if the work or not before you pay.
3. Use PhotoRec which is included with TestDisk but does not recover
the filenames or directory structure.
James
albireo March 17th, 2013 at 9:23 pm
Thank you, James! Your article helped me! Thanks a lot!
Ben March 20th, 2013 at 3:37 am
Hi James.
Ive got a 2tb WD external HDD and Im currently doing a deeper

scan, but it is extremely slow, its been scanning for around 48 hours
and its only managed to do 9% is this normal?
Hi Ben
Thats only 18GB so it sounds like there is probably a hardware
problem with the hard drive.
I wrote a post about checking a drives S.M.A.R.T. data. It may help
you determine if there is a hardware issue.
http://html5.litten.com/accessing-and-assessing-a-hard-drives-s-m-a-
r-t-data/
If there is a hardware issue, you should use a professional recovery

If there is a hardware issue, you should use a professional recovery
service or at the least make an image of the drive (2TB is a huge
image and could take a week to make with GNU ddrescue in order to
recover all the good data and attempt to get the bad areas of the
drive.) and then attempt data recovery from the image.
James
Ben March 20th, 2013 at 5:45 am
I am unable to enable SMART

I get the error message Cannot enable SMART Mandatory SMART
command failed.
Seems like the drive isnt able to be fixed.

Ill probably end up taking it into my local computer store to see if
theres any possibility to recover some, if any, of the data and buy a
new HDD.
Thanks James for the blog though, it was very informative.
Zack March 20th, 2013 at 7:17 am
Dear James,
Recently, Im experience power interruption during copying my file

into hard drive. After power restored and restarts my PC, one of my
hard drive partition has become RAW and is not accessible. Ive found
this tutorial while googling around data for data recovery.
I followed every above step until Ive reached QUICK SEARCH after
ANALYSE. Unfortunately, there is no drive listed during QUICK
SEARCH.
Really need your assistance to recover my data as it is very

important.
Samadu Abdul March 22nd, 2013 at 3:06 pm
Please my problem is am having a 40Gb hard drive partitioned into

two ,i try deleting the partition and make a new one but the disk
cant format and it will return to it old partition with the same space
used and still have the files on it.please help me format the drive
and make new installation on it.
Thank you
Arturo March 22nd, 2013 at 5:19 pm
Hi James
Thanks for your work here, its a really nice how-to. Ive followed
these steps but it didnt work for me. I am able to see the files in my
disk just with the Quick search, and when writing the new partition
table, there is no message other than the confirmation (no problem
with the boot sector or other) and the writing is instantaneous (looks
like nothing happened). In anycase, when I boot with Windows the
hard disk cant be used (Window ask for formating it).
Thanks again!
Arturo
admin March 22nd, 2013 at 11:10 pm
Hi Arturo
Have you tried connecting the drive to other computers running

Windows? If you can and it shows up okay on those, backup any
important files on it and then run chkdsk on it. After that it will
probably be okay on the original computer.
If this does not work, see the comment I made to Stagz on this page
about how to copy files from the drive using TestDisk since you can
see the files/folders on the volume in TestDisk.
Hope this helps

James
Alan Long March 23rd, 2013 at 8:05 pm
Hi, Ive just spent a long afternoon (8 hours) and followed all of the
guidance to the letter only now not having one faulty partition but
two unreadable partitions from a hdd I removed from a Sony VAIO
PCV RX203 which was running windows XP pro edition. Having
rebooted the laptop it was connected both drives are shown in my
computer as e and f but both now come back with drive requires
formatting. the drive is a Maxstore 120 Gb ata IDE drive. In Test
Disk I cant get any file/folders to show in either volume. The system
has worked well for the past 14 years and was closed down as it
always has but when booted it would not load windows. The reason
why Ive spent so much time on it is because the system did work
well and due to the mechanical fitting of the drives I cant fit and
SATA drive as replacement and there is a distinct lack of IDE drives
available now. Any clues to help ?
Ritchie Blogfried Pettauer March 23rd, 2013 at 10:39 pm
Hi James, first of all: thank you for this excellent guide!
Unfortunately, I found myself in the situation described here two

days ago when a power outage shut down my media pc. The 2
connected 2TB USB drives became unreadable; I didnt format or
change anything but instead followed your instructions.
Im completely aware of the complexity of such problems and how its

impossible to answer specific question via a blog comment and I
know that Ill probably have to hand over this case to the
professionals (one disk contained my music collection, and Ive
been a music journalist and DJ for 15 years no full backup, st00pid
me;) but just one question before I do that:
I followed your instructions the quick search immediately found the

right partition, but when I press P, Testdisk tells me No file found,
filesystem may be damaged; I tried the deeper search, same result.
The partition (there was only one on the disk) shows up with the
correct name, yet there seems to be another problem.
Can you please just tell me if I should stop at this point, or do you
know of any other tool I could try that might be able to fix filesystem
problems? (Its NTFS).
Ritchie Blogfried Pettauer March 23rd, 2013 at 10:41 pm
PS: Im referring to:
DO NOT WRITE A NEW PARTITION TABLE IF YOU DID NOT

SEE YOUR FILES/FOLDERS That means the proper partition
table was not found and you will have to try a different
technique to recover your data.
I tried to google, but this led me nowhere
Any help/links highly appreciated!
admin March 23rd, 2013 at 10:54 pm
Hi Ritchie
If they are all music files, PhotoRec may work for you. It wont
recover filenames or directory structure so youll have to go through
and rename all of the results. You can also try some of the paid
solutions that have a free trial to see if they work.
PhotoRec is included with TestDisk.

Here is some info about it
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec_Step_By_Step
James
LEE CHANG March 24th, 2013 at 5:59 am
Im trying to calm down but Im freaking out here!
I have a 4TB seagate HD and I had filled up about 3.5 TB of it with
data (videos,movies, music etc). I was trying to make a copy of it(to
another 4TB drive) but some files were not going through(finder
would just freeze). so I was trying to copy file by file which was
tedious but I really needed to back up my drive!
I ran into an error where some of the files were not copying over
because of some .ds issue so i goggled how to fix it and the
solutions listed didnt work for me. I decided I would try copying from
my windows 7 bootcamp OS and then it prompted me to pick GPT or
MBR and i think i clicked GPT. after i clicked it both the drives showed
up as unallocated space. I freaked out immediatly and went back to
my Mountain Lion OS and noticed that it wasnt reading it anymore.
Im in desperate help to figure this out as I have really importatnt

information in that drive. Its 2 am and im googling and ran into this
thread but I dont think this will fix my issue. Im scared to even try
anything because it seems like there is an easy fix for this.
PLEASE ANYBODY HELP ME..
Nashwan Doaqan March 24th, 2013 at 9:03 am
Hi , I am following your steps now
Luis Mc Leod March 24th, 2013 at 5:46 pm
Hi James
Your instructions are really good, thanks in advance for your good
work.
I hope you can help me, I cant figure out my problem. I have a 3TB
WD external hard drive that suddenly asks to format it in order to use
it, Im under windows 8.
I have done all steps and I can see my all files after quick search,
and when it asks to write partition table, says write error.
Boot and MFT are ok.
Could be that TestDisk doesnt work with 3TB hard drives?
Theres other way to recover my partition table without transfering to
another HD? Because I have used almost 80% of my HD.
Thanks
Hi Luis
If you are running TestDisk in Windows, it may not have the proper
permissions to write a new partition error and that would give you an
error like that.
James
Steph March 25th, 2013 at 6:24 am
Hello James,
Thanks for the excellent tutorial. However, I have run into a problem.
My WD 1TB external hard drive stopped being recognised in Windows
and when I checked there was no file system. Using your tutorial, I
found 1 NTFS partition and after the deep search I pressed P to see
the files / folders.
The problem is that only about 35 folders / files are listed when there
should be about 60. I now do not know how to proceed. Is this due to
restrictions in CheckDisk? Is it possible to recover those folders after
writing a new partition table? Should I try using other software?
Could you please help me?
Many many many thanks in advance.
Hi Steph
Could there be more than one partition on that drive? If so, maybe
your files are in another partition that has not been detected.
James
Steph March 25th, 2013 at 6:27 am
Sorry, I meant TestDisk instead of CheckDisk.
Alaa March 25th, 2013 at 7:32 am
Hey James. I have a 4GB USB flash drive that is being read as RAW
in Windows. I dont want the files on it, I just want it to be
functional again. I installed TestDisk on my Ubuntu machine and
went through the steps you mentioned above. After the quick search,
TestDisk found the FAT32 partition (and it showed all my files when I
listed them too). So I clicked enter and chose write to write the
partition table. It didnt mention anything about the boot sector and
went straight to reboot for change to take effect. I hit enter and
didnt reboot, but instead I went into the menu item Advanced
under Analyze. Theres an option that says Boot (boot sector
recovery). In there, it shows:
Disk /dev/sdb
4059 MB / 3871 MiB
CHS 1023 125 62
Partition Start End Size in sectors
FAT32 0 1 1 1021 124 62 7920438 [NO NAME]
Boot sector
Warning: Incorrect number of heads/cylinder 255 (FAT) != 125 (HD)
Warning: Incorrect number of sectors per track 63 (FAT) != 62 (HD)
OK
Theres the rebuild BS option here. I tried it, but it froze the
console. So, does this make any sense to you? Is there any other
way you know to fix my USB?
Hi Alaa
In Ubuntu, can you use GParted to remove any partitions on the flash
drive, add a new one and format it?
James
mia March 25th, 2013 at 2:00 pm
Hi James,
I tried to follow your tutorial to fix my raw drive (Seagate FreeAgent
Go 500GB) but the message Partition: Read error after i hit
Analyse
and i have no idea what to do. I did still followed through with the
quick search and everything but it just continue to Read error at
xxxxxxxx/0/1 (lba=xxxxx)
and i left it run till 100% for hours (because i dont know what else i
could do)
yet it did nothing
please help and advise, thank you
Regards,
Mia
Hi Mia
That sounds like some damage to the drive like bad sectors. You
should try the following (in order of safest to most dangerous)
2. Make an image of the drive using GNU ddrescue and try recovering
the data from the image.
James
Steph March 25th, 2013 at 8:26 pm
Hello James,
Thanks for your swift response.
I did not partition the drive, and it had only 1 partition when I
bought it. The partition size is 931GB, which is normal. So I think it
is unlikely that the files are in another partition.
Im thinking that one option is to write the new partition table and
then use software like Recuva to recover the missing files. But Im
not sure if this is a good option, and Im not sure why TestDisk wont
show / cant find the other folders.
Steph
Hi Steph
Ive never seen that happen before.
Writing a new partition table is not real dangerous as it is just a
small bit of hex data in the first sector of the drive. It can always be
changed again if needed and it does not change the actual data on
the disk.
Did something happen to the hard drive when it stopped working that
may have deleted the missing files/folders. For example, were you
copying or moving them shortly before it stopped working?
James
Steph
I want to add that when you run TestDisk and get to the screen
where you select QUICK SEARCH there is an option next to it called
BACKUP. If you choose that it will save a file called BACKUP.LOG to
the directory that TestDisk is in. Backup.log will contain a copy of the
partition table prior to any changes. (mount a drive and copy
backup.log to that when you are done if you are doing this in
PartedMagic or it will be deleted when you shutdown)
James
Steph March 25th, 2013 at 9:29 pm
Hi James
I wasnt moving data when the drive stopped working. It probably
stopped working because I forgot to use the Safely Remove Hardware
option.
Im going to make use the backup.log, write a new partition table and
then see what happens.
Thanks for your help,
Steph
Wilson March 26th, 2013 at 12:42 am
James,
What if I have a drive that I have no desire to recover its contents
and just want to wipe it so I can utilize it as a portable drive. Is
there a way to just wipe the drive and reformated so I can use it?
FYI, I have Hirens Boot CD but am new to the disk and I am
wondering if there is some type of software I could just use to wipe
and reformat the drive. Thanks in advance.
Hey James, GParted sees an unallocated space. If I try to create a

new partition, it says no partition table found. If I try to create a new
partition table, it shows a Input/output error during write on
/dev/sdb error after several minutes.
I think the USB stick has bad sectors, but Im not sure how to find
that out. I searched the internet and ran into the command fsck.
When run, it gives an error bad magic number in super-block while
trying to open /dev/sdb. I also ran into badblocks which checks for
bad sectors. When I ran badblocks -vn /dev/sdb, it gave an error
input/output error during write and started listing numbers from 0
to 63 in the output and froze there. I dont know what this output is
supposed to mean. Does this mean there are bad sectors? Its weird
because, in testdisk, I could see my files after analyzing and I
actually successfully copied a file out of the USB stick.
By the way, I also wanted to point out something: there are two
states my USB drive can be in. When I first plug it in, its read as
unallocated in GParted, and fdisk -l says /dev/sdb doesnt
contain a valid partition. But when I run testdisk, analyze, and write
partition table, GParted sees a fat32 partition, and fdisk shows:
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

/dev/sdb1 * 62 7920499 3960219 b W95 FAT32
But when I try to:

mkdir /media/alaa/flash
mount /dev/sdb1 /media/alaa/flash
It says mount: special device /dev/sdb1 does not exist. When I try
to mount sdb instead, it says mount: /dev/sdb already mounted or
/media/alaa/flash busy. When I try umount /media/alaa/flash, it
says its not mounted, haha.
Joe March 27th, 2013 at 12:08 am

Hi James,
I followed all the instructions carefully and successfully.
But, I face a problem:
After I choose the option Deafult settings 32 (Run from RAM), the
screen becomes permantly black, and the CD-ROM/DVD ejects after
few seconds.
What shall I do?
Joe,
Hi Joe
That sounds like it is loading PartedMagic but the video drivers arent
working.
After successfully loading it ejects the CD so that sounds correct.
Instead of Deafult settings 32 (Run from RAM) try selecting 5.
Alternate Graphical Server 32
James
Al_Jourgensen March 28th, 2013 at 11:02 pm
Hello James
i have a problem, i follow all the steps to create my usb pen boot,
but when the notebook reboots, it doesnt open the partion.menu, i
still goes to windows normally, i have altered my bios, but nothing
happens, and i try everything
please i need help to get in that menu
thank you very much, nice job by the way
Hi Al
Youll have to check with the manual for your computer. Different
computers can do that differently, especially if you are running
something that uses secureboot like Windows 8.
James
Al_Jourgensen March 29th, 2013 at 1:18 am
Hi James
can you be more specific, if you can be kind and explain to me how
do i do that, my notebook is an asus m50v
i apreciated your help please thankyou
Hi again James,
I tried to select 5. Alternate Graphical Server 32, and I recive the
same result like I recived at Deafult settings 32 (Run from RAM)
Permantly black screen, and CD-ROM ejects.
Joe
Jason April 1st, 2013 at 6:08 am
Hi James
Thanks for providing such a helpful service to the world!
I have a raw HDD problem as you mention in your post above. I have
tried the reboot from a FAT32-formatted USB flash drive option using
UNetbootin and Parted Magic, all as described above.. After changing
the BIOS boot priority and rebooting, all I get is a black screen with a
little blinking cursor in the top left of this screen.. I thought it may
take a while for the tool to load but there has been no difference in
the past 15 mins Any ideas?
Also, apologies for my ignorance, but what is the advantage of

running TestDisk via Parted Magic as opposed to running TestDisk on
its own from my host (Win7) environment? Is it because Parted Magic
is running Linux in RAM after booting from USB and therefore might
very well give you a greater chance of seeing your missing file
system?? Thanks a lot for your response when you get the time to
write..
admin April 3rd, 2013 at 2:29 pm
Hi Jason
The main difference is that Windows will try to read the file systems
on the drive automatically and Linux does not. The Windows version
is usually okay to use if there is no physical damage to the drive like
bad sectors.
James
Dana April 1st, 2013 at 11:06 pm
Hi James,
I am very impressed and grateful for the generosity you provide. Your
time and wisdom are very valuable and I deeply appreciate you giving
so freely of yourself. Thank you.
I have run into something I am wondering if you wouldnt mind

guiding me on.
When I did the quick search nothing came up under partions. I then
continued to the deeper search and there was then one partition
listed. I did see my files/folders. I chose write. The boot sector was
also bad, so I chose rebuild bs. Its at this point where my screen is
different from your instructions. Instead of asking to confirm writing
to the partition table, it goes to a screen that lists the partition, then
it says
Cluster 2, Directory / found?

Answer Y(es), N(o), Q(uit or A(bort interactive mode), N or A if not
sure.
Below that is listed 3 options I can highlight with my arrow keys.
drwxr-xr-x 0 0 0 6-Mar2013 00:22 Recycled

drwxr-xr-x 0 0 0 22-Feb-2012 19:27 My Documents
drwxr-xr-x 0 0 0 12-Jan-2013 12:02 My Music
I do not know which line to select and I also do not know what
answer to choose?
Can you please help me? I am sorry to bother you and again I am
very grateful for your article and extra time. This truly is incredible.
Thank you very much,

Dana
Hi Dana
It sounds like you might be in Expert mode

I would need a lot more info to be able to tell you how to answer
that question. You can try posting in the forum at Bleeping Computer
(I answer questions there sometimes) or at CGsecurity (TestDisks
forum).
James
Joe April 3rd, 2013 at 3:26 pm
No responde for me James?! :\
Hi Joe
I did respond but it did not post because I accidentally used a word
that my spam filter does not like but can be used in a normal
message. Its tricky because this blog gets well over a thousand
spam comments everyday
What I said was

Try using TestDisk for Windows or try another Linux LiveCD and use
its package manager to install TestDisk if it is not included. I usually
only encounter this error with very old computers but it could happen
to a newer one if it has other issues or is an unusual or rare
configuration.
James
JVS April 3rd, 2013 at 4:24 pm
Will this process work for a micro sd card?(For my Blackberry phone)
Hi JVS
The problem with micro SD cards is that the issue is often with the
controller chip and in that case it can be necessary to send it to
someone with the equipment to remove the memory chips and place
them in a device that can read them.
In any case, if you decide to attempt anything on your own, you
should concentrate on recovering data and not worry about repairing
it for future use. Sometimes TestDisk, PhotoRec and other recovery
software can get the data off of it and I have even seen cards
become accessible when placed in another device like a camera and
then plugging that device into the computer instead of directly
connecting the card to the computer. Just make sure that it is not a
device that will attempt to automatically format the card if it does
not see a file system (some cameras do).
James
Dana April 3rd, 2013 at 8:35 pm
Hi James,
As far as I know, I am not in expert mode. I followed your

instructions exactly and what I stated in my original post is where I
ended up. The items in my documents and my music are both things I
would like to have recovered i dont know if that helps.
I replied here and will also put posts in those forums as well.
Thank you very very much for your time! I really appreciate your help.
Dana
Behruz April 7th, 2013 at 2:34 pm
I got to the bit where I burn to disc from InfraRecorder, but it

aborted at about 28%. It did say Warning: The DMA speed test has
been skpiepd , while it was burning. But then A write error occurred.
Please see program log for more details
ronald April 8th, 2013 at 3:40 am
I have the same problem but i have formatted the drive already.. can
this solution still be applicable?
admin April 8th, 2013 at 4:37 am
Hi Ronald
It depends on the type of format that was done. A Full format can
make the data unrecoverable but a Quick format typically only
changes a small amount of the old data.
James
Nathan Kornelis April 9th, 2013 at 9:24 am
Does anyone know if this procedure will work with a external HD that
is primarily used with a Mac? The HD in question is from my wifes
Mac, but I would perform the procedure above with my PC. Does
anyone have any experience with that?
Thanks,
Nathan
admin April 9th, 2013 at 11:44 pm
Hi Nathan
There is a version of TestDisk for OS X

That might be your best bet.

James
deste April 9th, 2013 at 12:44 pm
Great tutorial, really!! I do not ever hear about the testdisk utility
before now. It works fine and has let me save my customer data!
Thank you a lot!
John C, Price April 9th, 2013 at 11:32 pm
James;
I just received and hooked up a WD My Passport 2TB. I only want 1

partition which uses all available drive space for movie storage. Ive
had the NEW drive in my possession for about 5 hours.
Once recognized I opened computer management/disk management

and saw 1 large NTFS partition and 30mb of unallocated space. Using
explorer I copy and pasted all software that came with the drive to
my PC hard drive. I then returned to disk management and I did an
expand volume and received an error and I apologize I did not take
note of the error. So I deleted the partitions and tried to create a
new single partition. When I do this it locks up disk management and
the only option is to force the program to close. If I reboot Windows
(7 Ultimate 64bit) and open disk management again it shows the
drive as uninitialized. I can initialize the drive and it then shows up
with 1 large raw partition however trying to create a partition leads
to the same problem. Using WD drive utilities it passes the smart
test and the quick drive test, I have not run the complete drive test.
At the moment I have downloaded and installed WD Lifeguard
Diagnostics and am now do a full erase as there is no data on the
drive. This procedure will not finish for another 13 hours.
My questions are if at the end of full erase I still face the same
issues should I pursue returning this drive to WD? Or do you believe
the procedure you have described above will solve my problem?
Hi John
If you still have the problem after the full erase, I think that you
should return it. There are problems that can occur which do not show
up in the WD drive utilities SMART or the Quick test.
James
John C, Price April 10th, 2013 at 12:24 am
James;
Thank you for the quick response. I reread my post and want to clear
up something I said. I did the expand volume from the NTFS partition
in an attempt to reclaim the unallocated space. Also once initialized
the drive shows up as a 1863.02GB RAW Healthy Primary partition. It
cannot be formatted and if I delete it and attempt to recreate a new
partition thats when disk management locks up.
James;
I have finished the full erase. When I go into disk management Im

requested to initialize the WD in either MBR or GPT. Previously I have
just done this using the default setting MBR. Should I use GPT
instead? I read GPT is essentially for drives greater than 2.2TB but
Id like a little more clarity before doing anything. I only want to use
this drive as storage for movies in MPEG4, AVI and MKV file formats.
James;
I am posting this for the sake of others who may face the same
issues I did with the My Passport series drive.
To keep a long story short in the end after the full erase I found
myself in exactly the same position. I downloaded a 3rd party disk
partition manager (EaseUS Partition Master) which allowed me to
create the 1862TB NTFS partition. Although told to do so it did not
assign the drive letter during the create partition/format process
however once the partition was created Windows disk manage
recognized the partition and allowed me to assign a drive letter so
the drive could be seen in explorer and my computer. Obviously
Windows disk manager lacks the capability to deal with these drives.
I am in the process of transferring my first set of 434GB of movies to
the new drive:-}
Nikhil April 11th, 2013 at 2:17 am
I am facing a different problem. In my external hdd same amnount of

space is occupied, but i am unable to view the folders? Please help.
YougyZ April 14th, 2013 at 8:23 am
Dear Admin,
I have a problem with my hardisk, i cant enter my macOS, and it

shows a blinking folder in a question mark.
Ive tried using TestDisk, and it seems my HD capacity changed to

*2.2TB (non-partitioned), and when i used [Analyse], in testdisk.log,
it shows
Trying alternate GPT
search_part()
Disk /dev/rdisk1 2199 GB / 2047 GiB 4294967295 sectors
file_pread(7,16,buffer,34(34/0/1)) read err: Resource busy
..

Would you help me for find the solution, Thank you.
Sam April 14th, 2013 at 7:04 pm
Hi
Thanks for such a clearly written and helpful article!
I have tried using testdisk, and indeed I see the folders on the
disk. The problem is that when I try to rebuild the boot sector or
even copy the backup over it, it gives me a Write error : Cant
overwrite FAT32 boot sector.
What could be the solution here?
Alex April 16th, 2013 at 7:47 am
I have tried your steps and other programs but have a HD that will
not show up anywhere, i believe its lots its MBR and other ideas i
can check out?
Thanks.
hassan April 17th, 2013 at 6:36 am
hi, i also have a problem of usb stick as i insert into usb port it says
disk needs to be formatted or your disk is corrupted but i tried many
times no formation takes place and it shows the raw file system to
the drive but my other drives shows the ntfs files system, i tries lots
of methods to fix this but not worked kindley tell me the best
solution. thanks
jon April 17th, 2013 at 2:17 pm
What do you mean START>SHUTDOWN and then try booting it into

Windows to see if the drive is now visible ?
try booting it into windows I dont understand. Im I to boot into

my windows o/s, then plug in my usb drive(raw) to see if it works at
this step?
Ahmad April 17th, 2013 at 8:54 pm
Hi
what should I do If my file did not appear after Quick scan and an
error on deep scan
Joe April 18th, 2013 at 11:24 pm
Hi again James
I succeeded running testdisk

After running Deep Search
I selected the new partition, and I pressed p
Then I see the following message
No file found, filesystem seems damged.
Is there anything else that I can do in order to repair the drive?
TYVM
Ishaan April 23rd, 2013 at 7:33 am
Hi James
I have a 1TB WD external HD. Yest., my computer suddenly stopped

detecting it. It doesnt show up in My computer or in Disk
Management. However, it shows up in Device Manager under disk
drivesas WD passport 0740. Under properties, the status is this
device is working properly. It also shows up under USB controllers
and in safely remove hardware. I tried using a different computer but
same issue. There has been no physical damage but the HD is
emitting a low beeping sound.
I tried using parted magic but testdisk wont detect the HD either.
Same issue with other recovery softwares.
Any help on this would be much appreciated.
Thanks
Ishaan
Luke April 25th, 2013 at 5:59 pm
Hi thanks so much for these instructions. I managed to get copies

of my files, but not restore the fartition or fix the volume but thats
okay.
However for some music files I can see them partedmagic and check
the info on them to ensure the actual music was stored and not just
file name, but when I copy some files onto another volume, the file
name gets copied but no content just 0kb.
Any ideas am I doing something wrong?
In any case, thanks again for this post, as it has saved my most
important files, where none of the commercial software has helped.
Hi Luke
Ive seen that happen when the file systems hidden meta files have
some damage that has the correct info for the file but points to the
wrong location for the data. Sometimes I can get them using
PhotoRec (which is also included in PartedMagic) but it is often a lot
of work to sort through all it finds.
If you can get chkdsk to work on it in Windows (probably wont work
but worth a try if youve gotten your important stuff recovered)
chkdsk can correct the errors and point to the correct location for the
data.
Hope this helps

James
Joe April 26th, 2013 at 2:56 pm
Hi James
I havent got any responde from you
Hi Joe
It seems apparent that this technique is not applicable to the issue

you are having. I should probably add this to the top of the post
since I answer this question a lot

It sounds like there is file system damage that this technique does
not address. You should try the following (in order of safest to most
dangerous)

As incredible as it may seem, this post helps hundreds of people

every week recover their drives but it also brings a lot of traffic from
people who this technique does not help. I get many comments,
phone calls, text messages and emails concerning this post so Ill
look into providing better instructions for people that find it does not
apply to their situation.
James
Chris April 28th, 2013 at 6:50 am
Hi,
I followed the instructions to quick search and deep search but it still
could not find any partitions, can I do anything or is that it?
Thanks,
Chris
Hi Chris
It sounds like there is damage that this technique does not address.
You can try the following (in order of safest to most dangerous)
James
Chris April 28th, 2013 at 2:36 pm
Thanks, just one more thing. I cant get my Windows OS back up and
running from Parted Magic. I put the boot order back into its default
setting but all it says is No operating system found. Is there
anything else I can do?

Hi Chris
It is difficult for me to have the situational awareness necessary to

answer that here in blog comments. You may try posting in a forum
or taking it to a repair shop. Youll need to give them details of what
exactly happened as well as what model computer it is and which
Windows OS.
James
ellie April 30th, 2013 at 3:18 am
Hi, i wonder whether this will work for my case. My ext hdd suddenly
shrink from 500GB to 32GB after i format the hdd.
Previously i installed the win8 recovery drive in it(i decide to use
optical drive (DVD) instead because i need my external hdd). I tried
to format with NTFS, exFAT, FAT32. but it still only left 32 GB space
in my ext HDD.
I planning try to format it with the step you shown above *praying
that it will work
Anyway above information is really needs time to compile! always

appreciate a person like you that share their knowledge! cheers!
admin April 30th, 2013 at 3:45 am
Hi Ellie
Sounds like you need to repartition the drive. If you need to recover
data from the drive that was overwritten, do that first by seeing if
TestDisk finds the old partition and can see the files in it (at least all
but 32GB of them that was overwritten). Then use the commands in
the TestDisk screen that lists files/folders to recover the files to
another drive.
James
Steve May 3rd, 2013 at 1:26 am
I have multiple external hard drives. I have two laptops running

system 7 and one desktop running XP. For the last 2 to 3 weeks, the
system 7 computers have been intermittently seeing the drives as
raw or asking to reformat. The XP has no problems at all. Any idea
what may have happened? Im wondering if the April Tuesday
updates had anything to do with it.
Thanks.
Steve
admin May 3rd, 2013 at 2:23 am
Hi Steve
I often see drives that are RAW in XP but not Win7 and vice versa
but without a lot more details, I cant say what your issue may be. It
is probably something to do with the meta files that the drivers read
when they mount the volumes since XP and 7 use slightly different
file system drivers.
James
Yanawa May 3rd, 2013 at 4:47 pm
Ive messed up a 1TB Samsung HD103UJ HDD in an external casing.

I was out of balance, and accidentally pulled the USB cable of the
HDD half out of the USB socket. I pushed it back in and, after the
usual USB tones, 2 popup windows appeared. One with You need to
format the disk. etc, which I canceled out, and another one to Run
check disk. In that I also checked the top box to automatically fix
errors.
Within 2 minutes it finished and flashed a popup that I needed to
format the disk in drive P:
Which I did not do.
I followed your guide, Testdisk finds 1 partition with the correct size
and drive letter. Extended LBA, drive P:, 931GB (should be 931.5GB).
Both in Quick Scan, and in Deep Scan. But pressing P to display the
files in the partition gives me this error after both scans : Cant
open filesystem. Filesystem seems damaged..
(There was always also a 7.xMB unallacated bit in front of that
partition which I never could get rid off. But I do not care about
that.)
I than downloaded the trial of Active Partition Recovery 8.x and that
managed to locate 40333 files in the first 37 minutes (which I could
look at). But after 12 hours the file count was still the same. So I
paused and saved, because it cant recover without buying a license
and the file count was way too low. Also Mr. Hardtime is an
unwanted guest at the moment.
I also tried Easeus partition recovery but that didnt even want to
scan the drive. The button never activated.
scan the drive. The button never activated.
I do not have a backup because that drive had become my backup

drive for my laptop which only has a 300GB HDD.
At this stage, all I want to know is if I stand a chance to get my

Photoshop and Illustrator files, photos, and mp3s back?
Some 700GB of data.
Forgot to mention that the drive is visible in Windows 7 Disk

Management and Explorer, as drive P: but with RAW format, and the
correct size of 931.5GB.
Nothing has been written to the drive since.
Mounting as read only in Parted Magic fails.
I suspect that the check disk run mentioned in my previous comment
did write something. But this is just a wild guess. Im not a HDD
Guru/Ninja.
I made a mistake in my y bootable first comment, where I mention :

Extended LBA, drive P:, 931GB (should be 931.5GB).
It should be :
But as Primary Bootable instead of Extended Logical, drive P:,
931GB (should be 931.5GB).
Thats why I think that the check disk tun wrote something to the
disk.
admin May 3rd, 2013 at 6:21 pm
Hi Yanawa
It sounds like there is damage that this technique does not address.
You can try the following (in order of safest to most dangerous)
James
Steve May 3rd, 2013 at 6:10 pm
James,
What sort of information would be helpful? I will try to get it for you.
Ive been using external hard drives for a lot of years and have
amassed at least a dozen. I never had a problem like this before.
System 7 is particularly fond of not seeing the second USB drive I
hook up, though not always. I use a lot of big files in a lot of
different media types. And its not a matter of the drives being
inactive. I know how to check for that. Any help is deeply
appreciated.
Steve
admin May 3rd, 2013 at 6:23 pm
Hi Steve
Im afraid that I have to give priority for analysis of logs and testing
to paying clients right now. If things slow down, Ill let you know.
James
I only need to know if I have to give up or continue with something

else.
Missed your reply. Well Active Partition Recovery had an estimated

remaining 220+ hours left to go (over USB2), just 10 days. Ill just
leave the drive in the sideboard for now then, and lick my wounds.
Thanks anyway.
Steve May 3rd, 2013 at 6:49 pm
Thanks This is a real puzzler for me More than a decade of work

are in those drives.. Ive even been good and have a back up drive
for every drive for the sake of redundency. But when everything goes
wacky at once, it makes me somewhat nervous.
admin May 6th, 2013 at 3:32 am
Hi Steve
I just finished a bunch of jobs. If your still having trouble with this
technique, let me know the manufacturer, model of
1. The computers running win7

2. the computer running XP and what Service Pack it is up to.
3. the drives.
James
Steve May 8th, 2013 at 2:07 pm
Hi James. Im glad I checked back in today. Thanks. Im still having

the issue. Here is the information.
1)HP laptop: Pavilion dv7-6163us

running system 7 service pack 1
2) Acer Aspire One running System 7 service pack 1
3)Sony Vaio Desktop running XP service pack 3
Drives) I have about two dozen and of the dozen or so I have tried,
no drive is immune. They are mostly Western Digital 2TB and 3TB
drives. Most are USB2, which is what my two laptops have. I have a
few USB 3 drives, which are also WD. My XP uses USB 1
Im still hoping its an issue from Aprils upgrades and will vanish
after Mays. Hopefully its not malware as my Norton doesnt see
anything.
Steve
PS Forgot to mention, of the few I just looked at they are labeled as

WB Ext HDD 1021 USB drive
admin May 8th, 2013 at 2:44 pm
Hi Steve
I assume that you mean Windows 7 when you say System 7.
Sounds like a problem with the cables or the USB ports. Maybe the
quality of the power or AC power supply if the drives use those (I
have a WB Ext HDD 1021 and it does use a power supply).
Since it is intermittent and comes/goes on the Windows 7 laptops

but not the XP desktop then the cable connecting the drive sounds
like the most likely culprit. I doubt that it is related to the Windows
update since it only happens intermittently and on so many different
drives. If it causes all of those drives to go RAW permanently, then
the issue may be with all of those drives but for now it sounds like a
connection or power supply problem that is common to all of these
drives (maybe you are using the same bad cable for all of them).
James
Yes I did mean Windows 7. Ive been PC over Mac for the last 20
years, but I guess my early Apple days still spill out of my
subconscious. *S*
Hmmmmm Thats an interesting idea about the power sources and

and usb cables. The ones Ive been using for the laptop are centered
on around 4 each. Seems weird though it would all happen at the
same time. I have have been using the same one on the XP though.
Im not by all my equipment now, but Ill try pulling out and trying
some previously unused ones tonight. One question: I used all my
WD power supplies interchangeably. Have there been any differences
there I should have aware of? They all look pretty much the same to
me.
Thanks again.
Steve
SIR:
I am forever in your debt. Came home a couple of hours ago. Tried

changing out usb cables: Same problem. Tried switching out power
supply cords: same problem
Then came the Aha moment! I switched out the power strip: BOOM!
Problem solved. (Knock on wood!) Thank you very much It might
have taken at least another month before I thought to do that.
Thank you.
Steve
Hi Steve
Thanks, I am in your debt also now because you were kind enough to
share your solution. I shall remember that one the next time Im
looking for a potential single point of failure amongst multiple
components like you had
James
Noko May 9th, 2013 at 1:30 am
Hi,
I followed the instruction and found out that both Boot Sector and
Backup Boot Sector are bad.
I tried Rebuild BS option but it seems to do nothing after a long

search for mft, it just returned to the same page where there are
only 3 options available (Quit, Rebuild BS, Dump)
Could you please advise what I should proceed?

Hi Noko
That sounds like some serious file system damage. Without knowing
more specifics I would assume that it occurred due to either
something overwriting important sectors of the disk or hardware
damage of those sectors or the ability to read those sectors.
What happened before you stopped seeing the drive normally?

Can you check the SMART data for the drive as per my post here?
r-t-data/
James
Thomas May 17th, 2013 at 10:26 am
I did everything your guide said; checked that the right files are
present etc. Everything went quick; the writing of the partition table
was a matter of under a second. Now the drive wont even show up
under Windows (My Computer) when before it did but simply wasnt
readable -.-
Hi Thomas
Do you see the drive when you run TestDisk?
Did you run TestDisk in PartedMagic or did you try to do it in
Windows instead?
Does the BIOS see the drive?
James
Bill G. July 28th, 2013 at 12:12 pm
Hi,
Is your method applicable to a CD in a read/write DVD device on Win

XP? The CD contains a backup I made on a different computer.
Chkdsk says its RAW. When I try to copy the .bac file COPY stops
moving along after about half the file is copied.
Thanks
admin July 28th, 2013 at 2:48 pm
Hi Bill
You might want to look at this for some ideas

http://html5.litten.com/how-to-fix-recover-data-from-a-scratched-or-
damaged-cd-or-dvd/
If you can make an image, you can then run TestDisk against that
image. Im not sure about the file system type for that so it may be
problematic.
Hope this helps

James
ankit July 28th, 2013 at 3:03 pm
how much time would it approximately take to deep search 1 tb

harddisk?
because it has done some 280 files out of 121599 in around an hour.
Hi Ankit
Depends on the drive/file systems condition. A terabyte is huge. Ive

had them take anywhere from 2 hours to over a week.
James
it has already been 3 hours and only 5 percent analysis is done

hoping it wont take too much time
thanks by the way for this tutorial..was very worried until i found
this..
ankit July 29th, 2013 at 5:58 am
TestDisk 6.14-WIP, Data Recovery Utility, September 2012

Christophe GRENIER
http://www.cgsecurity.org
Disk /dev/sdc 1000 GB / 931 GiB CHS 121600 255 63

Analyse cylinder 36276/121599: 29%
Read error at 36275/40/54 (lba=582760448)
HPFS NTFS 0 32 33 121600 247 55 1953517568
is read error going to cause any problem?
generator went off and computer was shutdown during the

process..do i have to worry?
Hi Ankit
The answers to all of your questions so far are maybe, maybe not.
It requires a lot more information than can be provided in the
comments of a blog post since each situation is different. If you want
to avail me of my services, you can click the CONTACT ME link in
the right column and we can make the necessary arrangements. It is
not free (this post is the free version, beyond that, I charge money).
There are other resources for help at this blog in the posts on hard
disks and data recovery. You can see some of my public assistance
posts at the forums on bleepingcomputer.com (my username is James
Litten there). There is also my Kindle book at Amazon which contains
many of these blog posts as well as an explanation of how hard
drives and Windows file systems work.
James
Standard Gabriel August 4th, 2013 at 4:22 pm
My external hard drive became raw. i know my data is still there

cause when i plug it into my hdtv i see all my files. i cant access it
and did all the steps above until ANALYZING in TESTDISK. it showed
no partitions. i cant even mount it. i just need to recover my files.
can you please give me advice about this? thank you.
Bob August 6th, 2013 at 5:24 pm
My 3TB Seagate Free Agent GoFlex Desk external hdd started losing
the ability to access files after the pc would be on for 4-5 hours.
Whenever I would reboot, the files would be accessible for that 4-5
hour window. I tried Parted Magic, but when I tried to write the
partition table, I would receive the following error: Partition: Write
error
When I initially ran the Deeper Search under the Analyse option, I
received the following error when the scanning was about 43%
complete: Invalid FAT boot sector. When the deeper search finished,
I received the following :
Disk/dev/sdc 3000GB/2794GB CHS 45600 255 63
The harddisk (3000 GB / 2794 GB) seems too small! (FAT16 <32M
274598 237 11 362356 218 8 1409831071
here is the rest of the error after deeper search:

Disk/dev/sdc 3000GB/2794GB CHS 45600 255 63
The harddisk (3000 GB / 2794 GB) seems too small! (FAT16 <32M
274598 237 11 362356 218 8 1409831071
admin August 6th, 2013 at 6:30 pm
Since you attempted to write a new partition table, I assume that

you were able to see your files and folders after analyzing the drive
(otherwise do not attempt to write the partition table until you are
sure it is a fixed one that works).
In that case, you can try mounting the drive and copying the files to
a new drive.
http://fixit.litten.com/linuxfilecopy.html
Then you can check the SMART status of the drive that went RAW
r-t-data/
and if it is healthy, reformat it and continue to use it(make sure that
your copied files are complete and work before formatting the old
drive as it may not be possible to recover them again).
drive as it may not be possible to recover them again).
Hope this helps

James
Thanks, James. Yes, I was able to see the files and folders after
analyzing the drive. My only problem is that I dont have another
drive with enough space to hold 2.3 TB of data. Looks like I will have
to buy a new external drive.
Hi Bob
Repair of the drive is certainly a possibility but it would take an

analysis of the log file created by TestDisk to determine what path to
take. For example, it might be changing the geometry of the drive or
perhaps editing the entries in the partition table that TestDisk wants
to create or finding and solving the issue of writing the new partition
table.
It becomes complex and time consuming.
Check out these forums
http://forum.cgsecurity.org/phpBB3/
There are many here with similar problems with 3TB Seagate drives.
Since they are very popular drives and are absolutely HUGE there are
a lot of issues with them that often can be resolved but take many
hours to fix.
James
Oscar Gil August 8th, 2013 at 6:17 am
Hi James, I was wondering if you could help me out with a current

situation that I am in. I am stuck in this step Press Y to confirm
that you want to write the new partition table., the problem here is
that when I do press (Y), it says Partition: Write Error and the only
option that I have to press is >[Ok]. I have been following your
instructions step by step and I was wondering if I did anything
incorrect or if you could help me figure this out some other way.
Thank you!
Hi Oscar
It requires a lot more information than can be provided in the
comments of a blog post since each situation is different. If you want
the right column and we can make the necessary arrangements. It is
not free (this post is the free version, beyond that, I charge money).
There are other resources for help at this blog in the posts on hard
disks and data recovery. You can see some of my public assistance
posts at the forums on bleepingcomputer.com (my username is James
Litten there). And there are the forums for TestDisk at
http://forum.cgsecurity.org/phpBB3/
James
Jon August 17th, 2013 at 11:39 pm
Hi James,
Ive tried testdisk, and going into the partition it gave me Support
for this filesystem hasnt been enable during compilation.
Ive also attempted to copy the files, but not all the files are shown
when mounted.
From Disk Health:

Complete selective self-test log:
Note: selective self-test log revision number (0) not 1 implies that
no selective self-test has ever been run
SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision number 0
Note: revision number not 1 implies that no selective self-test has
ever been run
SPAN MIN_LBA MAX_LBA CURRENT_TEST_STATUS
1 0 0 Completed_read_failure [90% left] (0-65535)
2 0 0 Not_testing
3 0 0 Not_testing
4 0 0 Not_testing
5 0 0 Not_testing
Selective self-test flags (0x0):
After scanning selected spans, do NOT read-scan remainder of disk.
If Selective self-test is pending on power-up, resume after 0 minute
delay.
Thanks!
Jeff August 18th, 2013 at 11:04 pm

Trying to recover data for a friend from an external drive that from
what he says I believe a MAC tried to modify the partition table
and/or boot sector for.
I can recover the data, with errors, using TestDisk and a few other
applications but am having no luck with the partition table/boot
sector being rewritten.
It appears that somehow, the Mac overwrote SOME data for the drive,
but left all the actual data intact.
Im trying now to find a way to rebuild the boot sector and MBR
manually. (The data has been copied from the drive using TestDisk,
as well as GetDataBackforNTFS results vary between them.)
Apparently when he first connected the drive, Windows didnt see it
after a reboot, it did. Then, he felt confident that his data had not
been lost, and shut down teh next day, no data again RAW
system. So Im not sure what Windows saw the first time but I
know the datas there, intact, and recoverable.
So my advice to everyone: Dont give up!
Remember to the computer, its all 1s and 0s. It just needs to find
the right combination.
Vince August 20th, 2013 at 2:03 pm
Hi, can this process be done on windows 8? also, how much time it
would take for the whole process to be done. Any help is
appreciated.
Nick August 22nd, 2013 at 7:15 pm
Hello,
A 500GB Seagate Replica external hard drive is showing as 2048GB in

computer management (not shown in windows explorer). The number
of sectors is totally wrong, about 4 times of the correct number. I
wonder if there is any easy fix, such as reset the number of sectors
to the correct value. Thank you!
Ahmed Ezz August 23rd, 2013 at 7:35 am
I dont know how to thank you enough.

In my case i didnt care about my files anymore but this was a good
method to fix my Raw Disk without even being able to access
windows. thanks.
Troy August 24th, 2013 at 4:34 pm
Hi James,
Wow, you devote a lot of time to the blogosphere! I have to say that
its impressive. Thanks for all the info youve put out there its such
a huge help (Im glad I stumbled upon this!)
My issue is that in the initial scan with testdisk, it finds my partition

but only shows half a dozen files, where there should be about 50-60
and it doesnt show any of the folders that used to be on the drive
(similar to what steph reported).
FYI I have a goflex 3tb drive.
I am currently running a deep scan and I am getting multiple invalid

fat boot sector 0 D fat 16 lba and 0 D fat16 > 32M messages
My drive is formatted as NTFS so Im wondering if I need to worry
about these messages (Am I wrong to hope that because my drive is
formatted as NTFS that I dont need/have a fat boot sector?) Or does
this indicate damage to my MBR?
Ill wait and see what the deep scan turns up, but Im wondering if
you made any further headway with the user steph on recovering all
her files (not just the few visible in testdisk?) If the deep scan
doesnt find anything different Im considering writing the partition
table found in the initial scan an then using chkdsk to see if it will
repair the table and allow me access to all my files?
I appreciate any insight or advice you might have for me!
Thanks,
Troy.
JanGajtu August 28th, 2013 at 2:23 pm
Hi,
Actually i am not eager to recover my data in the sd card, i am just

trying to save my sd card to use it in the future.. i see 2 partitions
one is FAT32 and one is FAT16, what i need is to merge them and
make it a single accessible drive..testdisk is the only program that i
can accessmy sd card so maybe there is a way to rescue my card..Or
am i too optimistic?
Thanks,
Monshoki August 29th, 2013 at 7:43 pm
Hi James,
Thanks for your wonderful tutorial.
My flashdisk (Anymode 8GB) was removed carelessly, without Safely

Remove by a bad print-shop employee, and it failed to function
(You need to format the disk in message)
Ive tried your tutorial successfully up to the point when you need to
Write Partition in TestDisk.
I got nothing in the Directory list, and before I even do Quick
Search theres the message
Partition Sector doesnt have the endmark 0xAA55
I guess my flashdisk is totaled, right?

Is there any other ways I could do to save the data stored inside?
Thanks before, and I appreciate your deeds very much (including to

other people here)
LADYHAWK August 29th, 2013 at 10:21 pm
Hi
I can see such an amazing work here from you. You deserve a great
deal of recognition. I have run the test 6.14 test and no partitions
came up on the screen after the quick search which took 4 hrs by the
way? the area is empty meaning I cannot see partitions despite the
fact that previously disk management states my drive is healthy but
RAW.
The screen says DISK/dev/sdb 320GB/298 GIB CIB 38913255 63

Partition start end size in sectors
in this gap it was blank!
Underneath it says A:add partition, L:Load back up, E: to continue.
I darnt touch it until I get your advice on which option to press A, L

or E?
Very much appreciate your advice here. My nearly complete novels

are on this and my oldest family photos. If I can save this I will
credit you in my novel!
yosi August 30th, 2013 at 11:27 am
worked like magic

thanks
Geetanjalee September 2nd, 2013 at 2:56 pm
Hi James,
Thanks for sharing this in such a detailed way. Really helps! The
deeper search didnt list all my folders. What else can I try?
Thanks,
Gee
Armando September 3rd, 2013 at 8:48 pm
I see the files on PartedMagic testdisk and wrote the new table but
I continue not seeing my data on Windows 7 (Raw partition Data
Error (Cyclic Redundancy Check)). What else can I try?
Disk health gives Completed with read failure. Is my HDD broken?

Its a WD 3 TB Green and its still covered by warranty.
I backed up almost anything on another HDD using Dolphin file

manager on Knoppix but a few hundred of files are missing but I
dont know which they are.
Should I try to copy to back up again using Parted Magic instead of
Knoppix?
Thanks
Trevor Gordon September 4th, 2013 at 1:27 pm
I have got to the point where I can see my files (highlighted in

green) in Parted Magic testdisk.
I used the EFI GPT option (1TB external disk).
How do I copy the files to another disk?

I have 2 internal disks in my pc with about 1/2 TB free space.
I have tried to mount them but keep getting error messages.
I will have to send the messages in a subsequent post but I was
wondering if I am on the right track?
thanks.
Jake September 4th, 2013 at 2:21 pm
Hi James,
Just thought Id leave a quick message here
Ive begun your technique on this post.

First, I have windows 7 64bit home edition, but I began the boot
from ram under the 32but option will this become problematic
during the process?
Second Im onto the deeper search section how long does it

take? My external HDD has about just over 2tb of data on there. So
far its scanned 260/45599 cylinders (not even 1%), but has been
running for about 30 mins. Will this scan take days?
Third, my external hdd is formatted as fat32, but I was reading that

anything over 2tb becomes problematic for this format (my HDD is a
3tb one). Should this solution work, will my HDD go RAW again if I
leave all that data on there?
Cheers and appreciate in advance your help!
Alex September 7th, 2013 at 4:42 pm
Hi james,
i got the identical case! only dif is that my 1TB external disk is (was)
partioned into 2. after writing the tables and rebuilding boot sector
the 2 partions are merged to 1 and yet i cant access any files.
pls advice?
Nick September 10th, 2013 at 11:00 am
Hello
I did the process until the first search.
It showed no new partition like the example above.
Also every number that was rolling during the search was an error
(too many on my disk I suppose!)
After the first search, the only option that I could choose was deeper
search. After that ended I got the message that no partition was
found and the only thing I could do is press quit.
Is my disk too damaged to do anything?
Please reply as I have critical data on my disk (Western Digital My
Book 3.0 1T)
Thank you very much!
Dan September 11th, 2013 at 4:17 pm
I am doing a TestDisk on my drive because I wasnt able to mount it

as it kept telling me to format. Now, I see a part that says Read
error at 403/254/63 (lba=6490259), should I be worried and is this
going to keep going? I see my files when going through Partion P
key but now, I am doing whatever possible ways to get my data
back.
Paul September 12th, 2013 at 2:09 pm
What about an internal 750GB SSD (in a laptop) that isnt being
recognized.
Dan September 12th, 2013 at 2:28 pm
Okay. Its finished right now.
It saying
The Harddisk (1999GB/1862GiB) seems too small!! <

Check the harddisk size: HD jumpers settings, BIOS detection
The following partitions cant be recovered:

> FAT16 >32M 376311 179 60 508917 92 8 2130309858
And then bottom says CONTINUE which I click and there wasnt any
partition or drive made for me to back up. So what the heck just
happened after leaving my computer for 2 days? Why wasnt it
allowing me to access my hard drive? Everything seems right on this
tutorial except my result was different.
Andrew September 14th, 2013 at 4:50 am
Hey James, I tried all your steps on trying to get my harddrive to

work and just finished the Quick Seach part. Im really scared if right
now because I dont know whether or not if Im able to retrieve my
data or if its all gone. I have a 3TB harddrive that I was using since
I got it this year in May, 2013 and was wondering if you can help me
out getting my data back. Its a TOSHIBA PH3300U-1I72 3TB 7200
RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5 Internal Hard Drive model
recognized number on harddrive as: HDS723030BLE640 and the
current problem Im having with it is that I cant access it with all my
data possibly being gone. When I was randomly accessing my
harddrive today, I noticed that it suddenly became inaccessible and
my files started arent showing, and it shows what exactly happened
here when I try to click it asking me to reformat it before I can use it,
and then Volume does not contain a recognized file system. Ill
need your help on this if you can help me with this problem. Im
scared that all my data might be gone I would be thankful if you
help me. I have over 2tb of data on this 3tb harddrive and I certainly
dont want to lose all of it. I used a nice Data Recovery software
called Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery and the scans didnt
take too long, but it couldnt detect any of my files. Are all my files
gone? I really hope this is not the case, Im going to be miserable for
the rest of my life forever. so please I need your help on this, I
have important videos, documents, pictures, etc, that Ive saved on
it. Im sure its recoverable. I just happened to accidentally pull the
USB plug from my harddrive and now its like this.
Bala September 14th, 2013 at 7:51 am
Hi james,
I have a wd 1Tb passport i had the same problem as mentioned
above as the same. so i followed the steps above and i downloaded
testdisk software and analysed my passport but after quick/deep
search it says as no partition found or selected for recevoryplz help
me as i have lots of data in it
Graham September 15th, 2013 at 9:55 pm
Hi James.it goes without saying stirling work you do here.

Pretty much having a similar problem to a lot here 1TB WD went bad
whilst transferring a file.
I came across following directions
Check_FAT: Cant read FAT boot sector.
Invalid boot sector.
followed by the following partitions can not be read in the next
section. I therefore could not see my files, am I to assume this is the
end? or do you perhaps have some more advice please,if so is there
any recovery software that retrieves files with their file names?,
attempting to rename 35,000+ MP3 tracks would be a logistical
nightmare and bordering on the impossible along with the other huge
amount of data I have on there.
Any help will be gratefully receivedGraham
a September 16th, 2013 at 4:09 am
i have a 1tb wd external harddrive which turned raw and not working
ive tried everything
pls help first time here
Hamid September 19th, 2013 at 8:30 pm
Hi
I did work for me. I says the partition is not recoverable. What shall I
do next?
do next?
Thanks
Jose Henrique Sousa September 20th, 2013 at 3:09 am
Hello James.
One of these days, I started having problems when mounted an

image of CD or DVD or Bluray (ISO).
After mounting the ISO in a virtual drive, whenever I tried to access
it I received the message:
Windows can not read from this disk. The disk might be corrupted, or
it Could be using a format that is not compatible with windows.
I Uninstalled the CD / DVD / Bluray emulation software and

resinstalled but the problem was not resolved. I uninstalled and tried
other software, but it was all in vain.
I have a Bluray burner on my computer. I put a simple CD in the drive

and now Im getting the messages:
1. You need to format the disk in drive before you can use it.
Do you want to format it?
2. This volume does not contain a Recognized file system. Please

make sure que all required file system drivers are loaded and que the
volume is not corrupted.
By disk management, I noticed that the Bluray drive (real drive, not
virtual) appears as RAW.
Is some information from the Windows registry corrupted?

How do I fix this?
When I access the CD from another operating system, the drive is

working properly.
Thanks for your attention.
John September 24th, 2013 at 1:17 pm
I have a 1tb seagate HD. every time I scan my HD with antivirus or

anything as long as its related to scanning, it always display an I/O
device error. it always happen everytime I scan it even though it
works fine before scanning. Is it a virus? how do I fix this?
thanks.
Paul October 1st, 2013 at 1:37 pm
Just wanted to say thank you. Without this guide I wouldve lost my
entire professional portfolio consisting of 5+ years. Im now going to
use an online backup aswell as an external drive but I genuinely
needed to say thanks for this guide. I cant imagine where Id be
without this.
Im still no better off knowing WHY my drive went from NTFS to RAW
though. Very very strange!
kenny October 1st, 2013 at 3:46 pm
i have a seagate expansion 500GB
my problem is like this
1.) when i start my computer with external HDD in it. it cant

detected
2.) my external hard disk is RAW drive
3.) when open it wanted to format but when i went to format it cant
complete it
4.) after avoid the format error it show that the drive is not
accessible and data error(cyclic redundancy check)
5.)when i use parted magic to scan my raw drive when it at step after
quick search it shows the file inside the computer i trying to copy to
directory it was success in second when i saw the file suddenly gone
6.) after step quick search i also tried to scan deeper search but it
slow to scan it (the detect scan is EPI GTI)
7.)i use data recovery i cant see my file at it after scanned using
easeus data recovery wizard pro at the icon 3 i use it.
8.)chkdsk also failure too
Thomas October 2nd, 2013 at 5:41 pm
I can see my data using quicksearch, but deep search showed me

about 0,01% / 1hour of testing..
I need my 100GB copy out of the disk, which has 1TB.
Testdisk shows, that I can use some copy commands, when I list the
data using P key, but how can I copy it??
Other WIN softwares also showed me for example 185hours of

testing.. it is not possible to run it too long..
I also tried to add the partition table, because I saw my data, but It
did not help.
Wilson October 4th, 2013 at 6:52 am
Hi,I follow your guide and made it to You will have to reboot for the
change to take effect but after I reboot when i check my hard drive it
still shows as a local disk
kareem October 6th, 2013 at 8:09 am
hi
thx for very important explanition its so helpfull .
i found an information will help in very simple .
the HDD raw can be acces very simple ( read & write ) throw some
satlites such a strong which have 2 USP port with copy option coz
its can deal with ( NTFS , FAT32 & RAW ) .
the solution will be by connect the new HDD with damage HDD RAW
to the satalite and copy any file from old one to the new >
i know its wear but its worcks aboyslutly

i hope this sulution well help you
hatif October 6th, 2013 at 6:22 pm
dear sir
i try deep search after the quick without press p

when finich deep search i didnt show new partion and couldnt load
back up coz no backup or fix
any help its so important file in it
dalong October 7th, 2013 at 12:33 pm
Hi admin the for the post but my problem is that when I did a quick
search I found all my data by listing it all out then I try to write it
then it ask me to reboot but when I reboot everything is still the
same then we try booting into parted magic again I attempt to repair
my boot sector but it said all OK buts it still raw please excuse my
english
paoen October 14th, 2013 at 11:42 am
Hi Admin, I just wanted to change my RAW to NTFS without

recovering the files since i always back up my files so theres no need
to recover it.
i have 3 partitions on my 750GB HDD

using disk part i accidentally deleted all the 3 partitions since all the
3 partitions turned into RAW format.. now its a 1 RAW format
partition 750GB..
i just wanted to reformat my HDD from RAW to NTFS without

recovering my files.
Do i still have to follow this steps or is there another way based on

my concern?
THANKS ADMIN!
abby October 14th, 2013 at 12:08 pm
Hi
i am trying to do all these steps, i have made the cd, booted the
computer of the cd, the blue screen came up with 2 options
1 Default settings 32 (Runs from Ram)

2- Default settings 64 (Runs from Ram)
i have tried both of them pressed enter and tab ( not sure how to
select it )
all it did was send me to a black screen with a lot of writing on it and
in blue writing it says
setting up system devicesDONE

Searcching for PMAGIC_2013_08_1.SQFS..DONE
Copying Files to RAM.Cp: read error Input/Output error
Mounting //sqfs_disk/PMAGIC_2013_08_01.SQFS failed.
and it is telling me i am on the command line.
It did not take me the desktop you were talking about above i
couldnt continue the process because i basically got nowere
PLEASE HELP ME I HAVE HEAPS OF DATA I DO NOT WANT TO LOOSE

IT IS ALL VERY IMPORTANT I DONT KNOW WHAT ELSE TO DO
* By the way i was running the boot cd of a windows vista laptop.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE HELP
Barry October 16th, 2013 at 12:54 am
Worked a treat! Fixed my WD 500GB backup drive, that Id almost

given up on.
Thanks a million.
DoanSon October 20th, 2013 at 1:18 pm
Thanks you very much !
Clemicus October 20th, 2013 at 8:49 pm
This helped immensely. Thanks.
My external Seagate decided to disconnect, at the same time

Windows decided to change the drive letters around. Had another
USB drive connected at the time, my computer displayed the two
drives as one. Disc management stated the allocated space on the
Seagate was the same as the other USB drive.
Anyway, thanks again.
Joe October 21st, 2013 at 5:29 am
When I try and list the files within the selected partition message:
Segmentation fault is returned and testdisk terminates. What are my
options?
Thanks,
Joe
SCOTT RENDALL October 24th, 2013 at 1:54 pm
when i get a read error
how do i fix it??
cant really follow the instructions to be honest sorry lol!!
i know dumb eh
Amit Kumar October 26th, 2013 at 10:21 am
Thanks so much. You steps save my 2tb segate backup plus data.
Bruno October 27th, 2013 at 2:39 pm
hi! i have kind the same problem but im trying to fix my usb stick
(8gb. i followed all the steps but when i do my search and deaper
search i still dont have any partitions found chan you help me
please?
Mac October 28th, 2013 at 8:56 am
Hi,
Thanks for posting a great article on using Test Disc.
I have a question. I have been running Test disc (deeper search) for
one week now and am only 03% through the operation.
3,920/121,596 cylinders analized. Is this normal, or should I close
Test Disc and start again? The disk I am analizing is a 1Tb Western
Digital in a Buffalo housing.
Thanks in advance.
valasu October 29th, 2013 at 7:25 am
I cant fix my 8gb trancend usb stick and i am tried the following step
but it cant find the partition table and it was corrupted is there any
way to fix it
manoj October 31st, 2013 at 6:38 am
Hi guyz,
im unable to open my E:drive its showing RAW , please help me
how to resolve this issue
Gavin November 3rd, 2013 at 7:04 pm
This has not worked for me. I cannot mount my drive to copy over
important files within partedmagic.I CAN see my files when i run
testdisk but after rebooting into windows still cannot see my data &
files.
I could really use your help James as i have followed every instruction
& still no luck.
neo-saitek November 6th, 2013 at 5:54 pm
i have a problem with a drive that is showing up as being RAW and

also being a FAT32 how can it be both.. i cant use file recovery
software on it as its showing zero bytes and cant be accessed but i
can access it in windows and it shows up as having 7gig free and
370gig used.. it even shows a file structure that i can access but i
know that there are folders missing and its these that i need to
recover.. im stumped.. it should be impossible for a drive to be RAW
and FAT32 at the same time.. if someone has a solution to this
problem then please let me know ty
Musa November 8th, 2013 at 4:01 am
Im using data recovery and its show that the data is rawshould I
recover it first and use parted magic to make it normal?
APrice November 8th, 2013 at 9:16 pm
Hello James,
I am amazed at how helpful youve been to everyone!
My boot sectors are not identical

It reads
/*
Boot sector
ntfs_boot_sector: Cant read boot sector.
Status: Bad
Backup boot sector

Status: OK
Sectors are not Identical.

*/
Will rebuilding the boot sector fix this without deleting data?
If not how should I go about solving this?
Please help!
Thanks,
Andrew
Sarthak November 10th, 2013 at 6:07 pm
Can i skip all that recovery part as i only want a working hard
drive,the Deeper search part takes too long,How can i go straight to
the build Bad Sector part?I m using a 500GB Seagate external
Harddisk and it is RAW.
Ibn Huzair November 12th, 2013 at 9:46 am
Cant open filesystem .filesystem seems damage.

What should i do?
henry landivar November 17th, 2013 at 1:39 pm
My external HD showed up as a RAW file this morning and I ran

testdisk and saw nothing expect when I ran a Deep Scan. I pressed P
and TesDisk then says Cant not open Filesysyter. Filesystem seems
damaged. What should I do now to save it?
Janne L December 8th, 2013 at 7:34 pm
My 2tb flash external hard drive had unfortunate meeting with partion
tool. It managed to delete all partitions from external hard drive and
make it raw. Do you have any recommendations how to proceed from
that. I used partedmagic and testdisk to check out this and it seems
disk is ok but it really does not anything inside it. no partitions or
files.
admin December 8th, 2013 at 7:49 pm
Hi
If the tool you used overwrote the data with zeros then it may not be
possible to recover the data. Check with the manufacturer of the
partition tool to see if it does overwrite the data on the drive.
James
Bryan F December 11th, 2013 at 10:46 pm
You sir are a gentleman and a scholar. No doubt one of the most
concise manuals and you really took the time. I ran the scan and
found 3 partitions one of which was the target with all the files in it.
I knew this when I pressed P to list the files. When I went back by
pressing Q and then enter I no longer had the option to Write.
Probably missed a step. Regardless I started the scan again and I
am waiting. The first scan took 6 hours because my drive is 3
Terabytes but it is worth the wait. If I know that the files are there I
do not need to press P to list and just select the partition and Write?
Just want to make sure before I mess up again. Another thing. At the
first 3% of the scan it gave me several warnings that the number of
sectors were misaligned but at the end those were part of the other
partitions that did not contain the needed files. BTW, this drive was
not partitioned. It was a single partition. Do you recommend
partitioning the drive because it is a 3 TB? Keep up the excellent
work.
admin December 12th, 2013 at 1:37 am

Hi Bryan
The best course is to verify the existence of files and folders by

hitting P but the worst thing that can happen by writing without
verifying that is it could write an incorrect partition table and it
sounds like it is already incorrect anyway It shouldnt affect the
actual data on the drive.
If you are not using the drive with any operating system or software
that has a 2TB limit for hard drive access then whether or not you
partition it is a personal preference.
James
Bryan F December 14th, 2013 at 2:47 am
Hi James, The scan produced the same thing and I saw the partition
with my files. Like you said the boot sector was bad so when I went
to write it asked to fix it and it did like in your screenshot. Once
done it said to reboot to take effect. Once rebooted it asked to
CHKDSK and I opted out and booted into windows. Windows sees the
drive but it is still raw and shows no files. Decided to run the scan
again but this time it found the right and only partition. Practically
right away vs the 6 hours that it took before. Wrote the table again
and still the drive continues to be raw. It wants to CHKDSK every
time I boot into windows. Am I missing something? If I can see the
partition with all my files why can I not recover? I await your verdict.
Thanks again.
Bryan F December 14th, 2013 at 3:04 am
Update. Ran the scan once more. When I try to list the partition it
gives me the following. Failed to open NTFS attribute: No such file or
directory. Segmentation fault. root@pertedmagic:~#
Hi Bryan
It is very hard to safely advise you on this without having you

provide me with a bunch of information to analyze in the form of
various log files. Unfortunately, I do not have the time to do that but
I can offer some answers/suggestions.
You can try rebooting and see if you can see the files again in
TestDisk and then recover them to another drive from that screen in
TestDisk where you see them as I describe in this comment.
http://html5.litten.com/how-to-fix-external-disk-drive-suddenly-
became-raw/#comment-3994
If you are unable to access the partition, then it could be physical

damage or possibly CHKDSK actually started running on it when you
rebooted and it was interrupted. This may have left the file system in
a corrupt state.
For either of those possibilities, the best course of actiona (aside

from sending it to a data recovery lab) is to first make a copy of the
entire disk using something like ddrescue as described here.
http://html5.litten.com/windows-file-recovery-series-part-4-recover-
files-from-a-bad-hard-drive/
Then run chkdsk on the disk and see if that brings it back to life or at
least makes it possible to recover files from within TestDisk as
mentioned previously.
If it goes horribly wrong, you always have the copy that you made
with ddrescue.
James
Bryan F December 14th, 2013 at 10:36 pm
Final update. Thanks again for your incredible patience. In total

surrender I allowed the machine to boot into CHKDSK and let it run.
It hard stopped several times but I kept booting into CHKDSK until it
finished the process and guess what. The drive was finally available.
I made a backup of the files and will be formatting the disk to be
used again. I will be more careful when ejecting the drive as this is
probably what messed it up in the first place. I never bother to eject
properly. YOU DA MAN MY FRIEND. Happy Holidays!!!!!
Dana December 23rd, 2013 at 12:05 am
Hi James,
I came across these instructions trying to fix my 8GB flash drive but
after reading through everything I am wondering if this technique
would work on a much bigger issue Im having. Im using a old laptop
until I can afford to replace the hard drive on my Dell laptop. At
least, I thought it needed replacing but now Im wondering if I can fix
it. It is a WD 750GB that keeps giving me an error for bad sectors
and now I have to insert my windows disc after about an hour of
powering it up. It has no partitions (that I know ofbought it second
hand) but Im hoping I can isolate those. I have all my files backed
up so Im not too worried about losing data and I also have my
windows discs if needed.
So, should I try this technique? I wanted to ask first because it

normally takes me hours once I start trying to work on my computer
problems. Also, if I backed up my flash drive and dont need the files
should reformatting make it useable assuming there is no physical
damage?
BTW, thank you so much for helping. In todays economy its so hard
to be able to afford repairs. You are kind to offer assistance.
admin December 23rd, 2013 at 12:37 am
Hi Dana
If you have the data backed up and are already prepared to replace
the drive anyway, it is worth a shot.
Bad sectors are not always a death sentence for a drive. If there are
only a few (less than 15 or so on a drive like yours) and the amount
is stable and not increasing then the drive can often be used for
years without incident.
To make sure that you do not waste too much time on this, it is best
to ascertain just how many bad sectors there are currently. You can
do this by following the instructions here
r-t-data/
If the Raw Value of the Attribute with ID 5 (Reallocated Sector
Count) is greater than 15 then you probably do not want to try to fix
the drive.
Keep in mind that the current version of PartedMagic is no longer free

but there are still older versions out there which are free. I link to
one in this blog post but not in the post linked above.
The program for reading the SMART data also comes in a Windows
version that looks and acts identically to the Linux version so if you
can boot into Windows you can use it from there. It can be found at
gsmartcontrol.berlios.de
and is free.
James
Suresh December 24th, 2013 at 12:35 pm
Thank you very much for the detailed description on RAW format.
I would like to share my issue and solution:
Due to power failure my external HDD was shown as RAW in

Windows 7 on my laptop. This was resolved by using
C:\Windows\System32>chkdsk F: /f/r/x
where F: is my External HDD
Justin December 26th, 2013 at 7:21 pm
Hi James. Merry Christmas! I know youre a very busy guy and it

would really mean a lot to me if youll help me. I dont mind
recovering my files. I just want to fix my flash drive because I am
using it on my job. My 32GB flash drive is all Ive got and I have no
money on buying a new one. I just bought it yesterday and Im very
frustrated because it got wrecked the first time I used it. Please get
back to me. God bless!
Paul December 31st, 2013 at 4:26 pm
Should it be taking hours to reach the Windows like screen? I chose

the Default Settings 32 (Runs from RAM). The Loading
/pmagic/initrd.img .. has been running for hours. The dots are
still slowly expanding to the right. Im running Parted Magic ver.
2013_08_01.
admin December 31st, 2013 at 5:42 pm
Hi Paul
It should not take that long. Ive run that on all kinds of computers
and laptops (many damaged) and it never took longer than 5 minutes
to boot up. You can try running TestDisk in Windows instead. Use
version 6.14 and it should work for you. Here is the link for it
http://www.cgsecurity.org/testdisk-6.14.win.zip
Download it, unzip (extract) it to a folder on your desktop and inside
you will find testdisk_win.exe which is the Windows version.
When you run it, it looks exactly the same as the Linux version so
you can still follow my instructions and screen shots.
James
Jithendra January 3rd, 2014 at 9:33 am
Hi James,
thanks for the beautiful post ,,, I am facing the same situation, my
1tb wd passport is showing raw partition. when I have check with
power data recovery, It is showing the partition as NTFS and
shown the correct size.
The only thing is I have set a password for the drive ( seems wd
hardware encryption) , so If I boot with parted magic , I will not able
to see the actual partition until I unlock through unlock.exe,
is there any other way fix the issue???
Please help me??
Thanks,
Jithendra
admin January 3rd, 2014 at 2:25 pm
Hi Jithendra
You can run TestDisk in Windows. The Windows version is available
at
James
Karl January 5th, 2014 at 3:17 pm
I have an USB thumb drive (NTFS) with the message F:\ is not
accesible. The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable. Im
asked to format the drive whne connected to Windows. Chkdsk does
not work because of the NTFS (The type of file system is NTFS.
Windows cannot run disk checking on this volume. Both Windows 7
and XP give me the same message. Is there another way to run
chkdsk for USB drives? I would like to repair, which I believe is the
master file of the drive. Thank you for your help.
Best regards,
Karl
Dave January 5th, 2014 at 9:06 pm
Hi James,
I think Ive fallen at the first hurdle as when I boot from my parted
magic sub I get SYSLINUX 4.07 EDD 2013-07-25 Copyright (C) 1994-
2013 H. Peter Anvin et al and a flashing cursor. I am using an Acer
aspire on Windows 8 and have disabled the safe boot and (I think)
changed the boot order to the correct one. Is this a simple problem
to get past? Cheers, Dave
Hi Dave
If you can boot into Windows then you can run TestDisk in Windows.
The Windows version is available at
James
Dave January 6th, 2014 at 12:08 am
Thanks James, I downloaded TestDisk 7.0 but the usb which is raw
shows up as 64MB when it should be 16GB. Im a bit of a novice with
computers so have no idea about jumper settings, BIOS and OS
patches.
Cheers,
Dave
Hi Dave
This is more effective for hard drives. USB key style flash drives often
have internal problems that are not related to the file system. When
it works on USB keys, it goes very smoothly. Not like yours. Data
recovery labs are able to get the data in many cases but it can be
expensive. Remember though, that you get what you pay for so I
would advise against using the lowest bidder if you go that route.
If youd like me to look at the TestDisk log, you can send it to me at

james at litten . com
To get a testdisk.log file, run TestDisk again and be sure to select
CREATE in the first screen and it will create the file testdisk.log in
the same directory as the testdisk executable. (sometimes it shows
simply as a text file named testdisk if Windows is hiding extensions)
James
Dave January 6th, 2014 at 10:47 am
Ill do that, thanks. I dont suppose you know which type of partition
I should select for a SanDisk firebird?
Cheers,
Dave
Hammad January 8th, 2014 at 12:33 pm
Thank you. You just saved me from a lot of trouble. Thanks a lot
man.
Karl January 8th, 2014 at 4:26 pm
Thank you for the prompt reply.

Best,
Elvis January 15th, 2014 at 9:12 pm
Hi James
I find this very interesting

but will it work for RAID 0 ?
Cheers
Elvis
jumanx January 17th, 2014 at 6:08 pm
Hi James, your page is one of the best I have seen regarding the
tasks of recovering data.
I am greatly concerned about the weakness of the systems I am

using.
I upgrade my laptop HDD to an SDD and bought a cheap USB / SATA
converter for having access to the old (but still healthy) HDD.
I ve noted that my laptop suspended, and after waking, the external

disk was not readable, it showed some of the partitions as raw
I booted my laptop again with the old HDD, and got a whole night of
chkdsk running automatically and it fixed the partitions, not without
losing some newer files
once again I got my system with SDD booting and HDD as external
I understood that I must not disconnect the USB suddenly.
Never the less, the PC suspended and i got now, all drives as raw
with testdisk i could find the original partitions, but when I said
write it throwed cant write
So I shut down the system by the right way,
and now I got no partitions, and tests disk just dont find the correct
structure
would be pointing to physical damage? or just dont use ever again

the usb sata destroyer, i mean converter
Thanks
Hi Jumanx
It sounds like the problem may be with the drive not getting
sufficient power or possibly the power it is getting is fluctuating.
I suggest trying the drive with it connected directly to a computers

motherboard instead of USB and see if TestDisk can repair it again. If
you are concerned about physical damage, you can check that easily
by looking at the SMART data for the drive. Here is a post that
discusses doing that and how to read the data.
a-r-t-data/
James
Rohit January 22nd, 2014 at 10:17 am
Hi James,
I ran into problems with the partition tables on my hard disk when I
converted one of the primary partitions to logical and one of the
logical partitions to primary using acronis disk director home 11. As a
result both the partitions are shown as raw on my win 7 64 bit
system. I tried using find and mount and was able to see the files
and folders on one of the partitions (D:) however the other, which is
a system recovery partition (E:) could still not be accessed. Following
the instructions on this blog I have setup the system to boot
partition magic from the usb. On using quick search i was able to see
both the partitions but could see files on only one of them (E:), the
other one showed an error message Cant open filesystem.
Filesystem seems damaged. Is there any way to get around this
problem ?
Lionel January 26th, 2014 at 11:30 pm
Worked as advertised, Thank You So Much.
Carolina January 27th, 2014 at 10:09 am
Hello James,
I try to do your tutorial but I have a problem. When I have to begin

with the quick search the program doesnt recognize the partitions,
it says Partition sector doesnt have the endmark 0xAA55, so I cant
continue with the tutorial. What can I do?
Thanks very much
Martin Chalmers January 27th, 2014 at 1:59 pm
Hi James,
Not sure if this site is still active but have been reading a lot of
comments with similar problem to me so here goes.
Wonder if you can help with advice please ?
I have a clickfree transformer backup device, connected to a

seagate 2TB externalHDD which has worked flawlessly for the last
2years.
It is a mystery why it stopped working because all of a sudden it is
now telling me that only 59mb of memory is available. (There was
649GB before failure)
I disconnected the CF transformer and tried to look at the drive
alone.
Got the instant message this drive needs to be formatted before
use
I have tried it on 2 computers both say same thing.
Because it is out of warranty I took the HDD out of the case and
tried a spare HDD, it worked perfectly so its not the Sata / USB
board.
As I have other backups of my data I tried to format through
windows 7 and got the following.
G:\ not accesible due to I/O error.
I eventually managed to get into it through the CMD prompt and

DiskPart prompt.
I have managed to get as far as formatting the drive, the entry on
screen shows the following,
C:\Users\MARTIN CHALMERS>Format G:
The type of file system is RAW
The new file system is NTFS
Warning all data on drive G: will be lost
Proceed with format ? Y
Formatting 1907726M
0 percent completed
The HDD light is flashing once per second since hitting enter at
continue Y/N with format
I know 2TB is a huge memory to format but it has been running now
for about 3 hours with no obvious change.
Is there any type of time guide as to how long this will take to
format a 2TB HDD because I was expecting some sort of percentage
increase after now nearly 4 hours.
Am I looking at days ? Or has the dam thing hung up and lulled me
in to a false sense of security.
Do hope you can please advise, regards, Martin
Haki February 1st, 2014 at 3:03 am
Hello,
Tnx for ur blog. I have the problem which U have described here. I
have followed every steps correctly. I could see my files/folders in
the Linux. (Actually when I push P in the middle of procedure) But
after rebooting, still I have the problem. Nothing has been changed.
Would U pls help me. Thanks a lot.
Best regards,
Haki
admin February 1st, 2014 at 3:58 am
Hi Haki
When that happens to me, I copy the files to a new drive. One of the
easiest ways is to do it with TestDisk in Windows. I describe how to
do this here
http://html5.litten.com/how-to-fix-external-disk-drive-suddenly-
became-raw/#comment-3994
Then after you copy the files, check the drive for physical damage
a-r-t-data/
If it has no damage then you can format it and use it again (make
sure that youve gotten all of your data from it first).
If it is damaged then you should not trust it anymore.
James
Bill February 6th, 2014 at 5:37 pm
Hello James,
Great article! I am using a 7TB GPT NTFS volume connected via iSCSI
to a NAS. The drive was working fine but after a power failure, the
file system is corrupt and the drive shows up as RAW, no free/used
space, asking to be formatted, etc.
I am following your article to try and repair the file system, but I
have a question.
Does Parted Magic have a iSCSI support builtin? If so, do you have
any information on how I connect to the iSCSI LUN once booted into
Parted Magic?
I am currently using testdisk_win.exe in Windows and it is analyzing

the drive. It does see the volume label for the missing partition
during this process so maybe theres hope it will work
Regards,
Bill
Glenn Dwiyatcita February 9th, 2014 at 12:11 am
Two days ago, I got a SD card damaged you may have to reformat
it message on my Android phone after I spent some time on crazy
flappy bird thingy, and this even works like a charm for recovering
data of my _allegedly_ damaged micro SDHC card. Magic. God
blessed you, Herr Litten!
Tanya February 11th, 2014 at 1:18 am
Hi James, I have an external memory that I cant use anymore. It

says The file is corrupted and unreadable. I would like to find a
professional who can repair it because I cant do it my self. Can you
advice me someone? I live in Seattle WA.
Thanks.
Tanya
Haki February 11th, 2014 at 4:27 pm
Hello, Tnx for ur reply on my comment Feb. 1st. Actually I have

followed ur advice and I could copy a few part of my data but in the
middle of the work it stopped and from that time till now when I try
to access to the data to copy, I cant. Actually when I go in
testdisk/(choose the Ex hard drive)/Intel/Analyze/ I see Partition:
read error and I can select the quick search, but it goes through a
long-time search, however, at the end of the search nothing
happens. I cant see my files at all. Why?
Is there any solution that I can again have access to my files to copy
them? I really appreciate ur nice attention and promt reply.
Roger February 16th, 2014 at 11:00 am
Hi, does this repair process also work for usb 16G pendrive?
Ron H February 17th, 2014 at 2:34 pm
James,
Thanks for most informative article as I have the identical problems
with an external hard drive exhibiting RAW and associated access
messages. The main question that I have is must I use a Linux box
to use PartedMagic to effect repairs that you describe? Are there any
options to try to make these repairs on a Window 7 Home edition?
Thanks, Ron H
You can run TestDisk in Windows. My motivation for using Linux is

the fact that Linux does not automatically mount the broken drive
whereas Windows does (resulting in the Do you want to format?
message popping up everytime the drive is detected).
James
Ron H February 19th, 2014 at 1:23 pm
James,
Thanks for the info I ended up contacting Hitachi (the manufacture

of my HD) and learned that it would cost $850 $1,250 to recover
the data. (Wow! I should be in that line of business.) Anyway, your
websites chat played an invaluable roll in getting my datafiles
recovered. I was guided to PhotoRec/Testdisk which immediately
identified incorrect heads and sectors, once corrected, I still was not
able to view the files but was able to run PhotoRec and copy the files
to my PCs hard drive under new file names. I then tried EaseUS Data
Recovery which permitted me to view and save my files with their
original names to the desktop. This was not 100% clean, for it did
not preserve the original folder/file structure and produced several
additional corrupted files that I had to sort through.
Again, thanks so much for your insight and knowledge.
Best Regards, Ron H
Leon March 4th, 2014 at 7:08 am
Hi, just want to drop by and say how grateful I am for this
instructions that you have made Ron. I tried the first technique, the
one where we have to run testdisk and it worked and I managed to
copy some of my more important files. Sadly halfway through copying
the disk suddenly failed again and I couldnt make the disk readable
again using the testdisk technique.
Then I tried using the mount disk technique in your other article and I
could copy the files again. I want to say thank you again. I also want
to say how surprised I was when I asked the Western Digital rep
about recovering my files from my bad Hard Disk, they told me there
was absolutely no way to recover them. I wonder why people who
worked in this kind of industry didnt know how to recover the files,
especially when the steps involved is kind of simple like the one
youve posted.
Kemun Khimhun March 5th, 2014 at 5:09 pm
Thank you so much. I was able to recover important files from dead
HDD. This utility and brief instructions combined made my day.
Thank you again!!
Danu March 13th, 2014 at 9:20 am
thank you..its great!!

i follow your tutorial but still want to format..but my hd already
become fat32 and i use chkdsk in windows..walaaaaahhh..my data
back..
thank you.
Melboure March 14th, 2014 at 8:42 am
Hi Admin.
I am facing this kind of problem whereby my 500G hdd doesnt want

to be formatted, it has turned out to be a RAW instead of an NTFS. I
dont want to recover any data from the disk I just wanna format it.
So do I have to follow those instructions that you gave to us or there
is another way of just formatting the drive?
Thanks.
anujsaini March 14th, 2014 at 11:07 am
sir,i have external latop hard disk (500 gb)with 5 parition.it two
partition show ntfs file system is able to open drive but 3 parttion
show raw file system which are unable to open these partition and i
have very important data in hdd. i want to save my data without
format and it also show I/O device error so, sir please help me to fix
it
niksnaksxd March 19th, 2014 at 8:48 am
Hi Admin,
My 1TB WD hard drive was accidentally removed from my laptop
without safety ejecting.
When I reconnect it to my laptop, it says that the drive needs to be
formatted. I dont want to format it.
So I searched the internet to find a solution and I found this site.
I followed all the instructions carefully. I found my files .. written it ..

I can even copy the files via testdisk.
But after rebooting, it seems that the external hard drive still cant
be read by my laptop. Its really a pain.
My question is, can I still use my external hard drive like its normal
again?
Can I just backup the files in it and then format it to NTFS?
Its just almost a year old. My father is going to kill me if he find out
what happened. Please help.
sumit March 21st, 2014 at 4:28 am
i did all steps up to analysis after that it wont displays the info of
usb like size, start,end to quick search therfore i cant do the quick
usb like size, start,end to quick search therfore i cant do the quick
search plzzzzzzz give me different technique plzzzzz urgency.
The Ghillie March 22nd, 2014 at 9:00 pm
Hi James,
I have a 64gb micro sd memory card. I pulled it out of my phone to

install a new rom and that is where all the issues started. I have
been reading and I saw that exfat and Samsung GS3s dont play too
well sometimes. That being said. Where I am at now is that I have
16+ gigs of unallocated space that I cannot access and the other
47+ gigs is in an exfat raw state and I cant do anything with that
either.
I already saved all the files on the SD card so I dont care about what
is on it. My #1 quest is to have the card fully functional again and all
64gigs in a FAT32 format.
If you can direct me through that process it would be great, I got

these two errors hope it helps.
warning bad ending sector (chs and lba dont match)
warning current number of heads per cylinder is 64 but the correct

value may be 128
I tried using the geometry menu and changing it to 128 but the error
still keeps popping up.
Regards
delia March 23rd, 2014 at 1:03 am
hola tengo una micro sd kingston hace 5 aos.. la preste a mi tia

para ke la ponga en su nootbook y me la blokeo no me la agarra el
celu ni la compu tengo fotos videos archivos desde hace 4 aos no
kiero formatearla necesito ayudaaaa
Rex March 23rd, 2014 at 3:31 am
Im having a ton of trouble trying to get my external hard drive to

read on my desktop after disconnecting it without knowing to first
systematically ejecting it from my computer! Ive tried to follow the
steps, but Im not as computer savy as a lot of people on here are. I
really need help is there anyway you can help me get my 1TB
external hard drive to work again? Thank You so much for your advice
and tutorials. Rex
Lewis March 24th, 2014 at 5:48 pm
hi there,
basically im trying to recover some files off of my external harddrive.

i downloaded recuver but it is unable to determine system type. on
my comp it says the HD is FAT32, any ideas?
lewis
Alireza March 27th, 2014 at 11:59 am

It worked for me! Thank you so much
evald April 14th, 2014 at 11:48 pm
Did not worked for me

Lost completely the data
Brian May 8th, 2014 at 6:56 pm
I have a question though. My scan has been running for 4 days now
and is at 90%. The hard dive had multiple partitions and they all
seem to be showing. My question is will there be a partition table
needed to be created, or just one when the scan is complete. Do I
need to scan each partition? Thanks for the excellent guide !
Hi Brian
There is one partition table that has entries for all of the partitions.
Either that will need to be rebuilt or a boot sector will need to be
repaired.
Here is some info on the partition table in a Windows 7 MBR

http://thestarman.pcministry.com/asm/mbr/W7MBR.htm#SN
It is very small but must be in a very specific place on the drive.
James
Sandip May 14th, 2014 at 1:18 am
Hi James,
I followed your instructions, I was able to find my files after quick
search, but after deeper search, which took around 7 hrs., the screen
was showing:
The harddisk (500GB/468GiB) seems too small (<1000GB/931GiB)
Check the harddisk size: HD jumps sttings, BIOS detection
The following partition can't be recovered
Partition
HPFS-NTFS 60800
What to do next?? Please helpeagerly waiting for your reply
ariston May 14th, 2014 at 3:02 pm
can i do this process to repair my sandisk 16gb pendrive now it is

showing capacity of 64mb raw file system and i want to retrieve my
data from iturgent please help
Jesus Villegas May 16th, 2014 at 11:37 pm
Hola! Necesito ayuda tengo una tarjeta SD de 32 GB Sandisk,

intentaba formatearla con el Patition Wizard y de repente
desaparecio y ahora no aparece, la ingrese en un dispositivo
BlackBerry y la reconoce pero no puedo acceder a ella y conectando el
celular a la pc intente formatearla pero solo me reconoce 31MB de los
32GB y no puedo hacer mas. me gustaria saber que puedo hacer. No
importa si no recupero los archivos lo que me interesa es que siga
funcionando, espero sus respuesta amigo. De antemano Muchas
Gracias!
dave p May 18th, 2014 at 11:01 am
I have gone through all the processes and it seems that my hard
drive has exactly the problem this solves.
It disconnected from a mates computer mid copy and since then has
been RAW. I have gone through all of the steps from partedmagic
boot on USB. It searched correctly. The problem I am having is it
asks to reboot for changes to take effect after I click yes to WRITE,
without going through the BACKUPbs. So I reboot and try again and it
says the same. So I thought maybe it has already worked So I
booted Windows normally but the harddrive is still RAW Any ideas
vova May 20th, 2014 at 11:01 am
Thank you a lot!
Simon Lee May 21st, 2014 at 6:59 am
Hi James,
Thanks for the above, a great help.
Everything worked for me until the last step. The drive still didnt
mount.
I can see the files in deeper search, everything. But not in normal
windows view.
Can I copy files direct from the programme? I noticed a copy option.
Any other advice.
Thanks for your help.
Simon
Bruce Walker May 21st, 2014 at 7:51 am
I have a 2TB Seagate that appears to be RAW. Originally I had

partitions the drive into 3 partitions.
I ran Quick Scan and Deep Scan. Neither found any partitions. And
apparently no Boot Sector.
So what other techniques can I try?
Thanks in advance and great article!
Hardik Bhatt May 28th, 2014 at 5:30 am
Hi James
My hard disk shows in My Computer but cant open and shows same
message as u have described at the starting. In disk management it
shows RAW type data.
The capacity of external HDD is 1TB and it is containing 930GB Data
without partition.
Is it possible to recover it from this method???
Please help.
T W Sawyer May 29th, 2014 at 7:04 pm
Wanted to say thank you, this helped me save some files for a
friend, sadly the drive wont come out of raw, it keeps changing name
before it can quick scan,
sde then sdf then sdg and so on,
but at least I saved most of his files.
Thanks again from: T W Sawyer
vikas goel May 31st, 2014 at 9:20 am
Hi,
You saved my 3 years life stuff I have been collecting.
I tried parted magic and within 60 minutes I was through my stuff
kudos to you.
Gie June 2nd, 2014 at 5:48 pm
Hi,
After Quick search it was written:

No partition found or selected for recovery.
But after Deep search:
Fat32 LBA. (in green)
After P it was list of the files/folders (some in red).
Can I select WRITE?
Data: ADATA Classic CH94
Gie
deodoma June 4th, 2014 at 4:47 pm
First off thanks for this info!
I have a 500GB Seagate that went RAW last week. The HD is seen in
Windows (as RAW) no files visible.
Tried running the Windows version of TestDisk several times, the

Drive type & size shows up correctly but when I run the Search it
reports read errors and eventually stops after about 30-60 min and
doesnt go any further with no other messages.
Will running the Linux Boot version be any different, does working
outside windows give better results I hope?
I also tried GetDataBack (free) and it also gets stuck after awhile
trying to scan the disk.
Thank you for your help!
deodoma June 5th, 2014 at 4:16 am
I went ahead and tried and while Parted Magic was able to see and
scan the drive, (unlike my attempt in windows) it still found nothing.
Got a message, File system appears damaged. Disappointed, I
decided to try your other method and tried to mount the drive, and
there are my files! I am copying them now, a chunk at a time and
hopefully will have success Thank you for all the great info!!
Patrick June 12th, 2014 at 3:09 am
A system crash caused my DATA disk to get corrupted and it is like

on this site. The DISK is RAW and wants to format.
I tried TestDisk and since the disks is ACTIVE but not a boot disk, it
found the 2 FATS but kept looking for a partition but there is no
partitions just the 2tb Fantom Green with a HDS5C3020ALA632
HD.
This program implies it looks for a created PARTITION.
Does it NOT work if the disk does not contain a partition created my
me to divide it up?
Anyone?
Baluku Collin June 12th, 2014 at 12:13 pm
my usb was 8gb now it is reading 5.5kb. when i used it on the

software you said it failed to be formatted. the file system is raw. Tt
can be seen in windows but not in ubuntu I do care about the data
on it but i need to use it again.
Daniel June 17th, 2014 at 5:28 pm
Hey James i have a mecer xc12 1TB hardrive,, this is the second time
its went raw and now I used testdisk,, but it says filesystem seems
to be damaged or corrupted and Im not able to see my files after i
did deeper scan,,, is there any other way to fix my filesystem without
formatting? Plz help me urgently
elias June 19th, 2014 at 4:04 pm
I had the same problem, with a INTENSO 3.0 (1TB) I followed the
steps above and then I used a iMac for opening the HDD. For some
reason on windows didnt work ! Good luck !
Daniel Bolz June 23rd, 2014 at 6:08 pm
What do I do if test disk finds no partitions and parted magic does

not display a drive to mount? It shows as healthy in disk
management in Windows. In GSmartControl, it shows the drive and
also says its healthy, but it cant run a test siting a read error. Im
really getting desperate.
Francisco Hernandez June 25th, 2014 at 4:13 pm
Hi James I did all the steps that you said and also ran and quick and
deep search but the program cant find any partition so I have the
option to A (add a new partition) L (load) or ENTER to continue, I
tried to add a new partition but not sure what will be the first and
last cylinder, head and sector and the type of disk, I assume that it
will be FAT32 LBA C4 secured FAT16, anyway when do that nothing
happen, the software ask me to put the new partition type (current
00) and when it y (yes)nothing happen, so I dont know wheat to
do. I have a Seagate 2TB external hard drive. By the way when I
connect the drive to my computer, can see the disk and some files
but all of them, should I have to format the drive? I dont care is I
have to loose the files on the disk, the only that I want is to use this
drive as a new without files and without errors. Note: In order to see
the files, I have to connect and disconnect the drive every time and
dome times the system hangs out when turn off the computer and
the drive is still connected, hope you can help me to solve this
problem, thank you and let me know if you need more information,
sincerely: Francisco
biswajit July 3rd, 2014 at 9:11 pm
hi I follow the complete instruction but after deeper search my files &
folder not show according to your instruction DO NOT WRITE A NEW
PARTITION TABLE IF YOU DID NOT SEE YOUR FILES/FOLDERS That
means the proper partition table was not found and you will have to
try a different technique to recover your data but you didnt say
about the different technique, kindly say about that technique that i
recover my all backup
thanks
biswajit July 3rd, 2014 at 9:13 pm
hi I follow the complete instruction but after deeper search my files &
folder not show but after quick search i can see some file & folder
with some file & folder with red fornt, according to your instruction
DO NOT WRITE A NEW PARTITION TABLE IF YOU DID NOT SEE
YOUR FILES/FOLDERS That means the proper partition table was not
found and you will have to try a different technique to recover your
data but you didnt say about the different technique, kindly say
about that technique that i recover my all backup
Jack Lation July 5th, 2014 at 5:22 am
First, why does a drive go to RAW? Is this caused from the drive
electronics burning out? Does it go Raw because of nefarious internal
input from external sources? There is a reason, what are the reasons?
Second, looking at the many screens that one has to go through on
this blog makes me not want to try this at all.
Converting RAW to NTFS should be a simple thing, like a command or
two to reformat the drive (if possible) to NTFS. This all all too
complex.
I understand the loss and pain of getting data from ones drive if this
happens and I wish you all the luck in the world in your recovery.
My interest is simply to convert from RAW to NTFS. When I Google
this subject, I find a lot of information from so called experts that is
meaningless drivel. Its try this recovery tool or dont press format
the drive. Bla Bla Bla!
How come the major drive manufactures have nothing to say on this
subject in a Google search such as Convert Raw to NTFS?
There are reasons why a drive goes to RAW. Yet the answers are
illusive.
Who will write the definitive chapter on the RAW phenomenon and
hard drives that will go to the top of a Google search?
Ray July 9th, 2014 at 11:57 pm
thanks for sharing

but ive got another problems that my micro sd is also had capacity
corrupted
my micro sd size is 4 gb but windows only recognize it 1 gb , how do

i can fix this ?
sorry for bad english
RR July 12th, 2014 at 6:59 pm
Hi,
I have WD passport 1TB and I have all my pics for the last 10 years
on this and all of sudden it stopped working. Couple of times it came
up fine I could access the files but now it takes so much time to
access and initially it comes up as Local Drive E and then when I
click it changes to My Passport E but can not access any files it
says 0 files. Some times it gives an error saying the this is RAW file
format and format. When I click on properties My Passport it shows
used space 821GB unused is 124GB. Please help me how to get this
fixed. All my family pics are on this and need them.
Appreciate any help!!!!
Please do not tell me that I have lost all of that. !!!
Joseph Webber July 15th, 2014 at 9:00 am
I got the needs formatting message on my memory stick (8GB
Kingston Data Traveler).
I retrieved the files using Testdisk but it does not show useful
filenames so I retrieved them using Zero Assumption Recovery.
I then did a quick format and checked it with Explorer and it showed
no files, as expected.
I later hibernated the system (Windows XP SP3) and left the memory
stick inserted.
When I resumed (not reboot) the drive had disappeared and nothing,
including Disk Manager, Explorer or Testdisk, can find it.
I removed the drive, rebooted and reinserted the drive. I got Found
New Hardware Unknown Device then USB Device Not Recognized.
Device Manager shows it as an Unknown Device.
I also tried PuppyLinux but it did not detect the drive.
I would like to use this stick if possible so is there any way to get it
back? I dont understand how it disappeared after hibernation when
nothing should have changed.
Awais July 18th, 2014 at 2:48 am
Hi James!
First, your mentioned procedure is really easy to follow.
Just two questions:
Running testdisk in simple mode doesnt show all the deleted

partitions, however, if I run the deeper search, several deleted
partitions were found. Thats OK so far.
1) I tried to check the contents using the P key, one partition after
the other. At the Eighth partition, testdisk crashed without any
warning after pressing P. What went wrong?
2) After having run the deeper search the analyse results are shown.
Can I store the results somewhere and start testdisk with these
results again (I mean to continue testdisk at that point where it
crashed)? It would save me a lot of time, because the deeper search
takes several hours
Thanks for your reply,
Awais
Ganesh July 24th, 2014 at 9:47 am
hi
i have 32gb toshiba pendrive
and i have very imp data on it..
it also shows the same msg when i did chkdsk on windows cmd.
now with ur tool after clicking on analyze it shows me a warning that
bad ending sector (CHS and LBA dont match)
and after doing Quick Search it says the following partitions cant be
recovered..
please help me with this i really want my data
hamdinal July 25th, 2014 at 6:13 am
it worked! Thanks a lot James
shrikant July 28th, 2014 at 2:44 pm
Two days ago I had posted a query. Your input would, probably,have
helped me immensely. You are providing great help to people in
trouble who do not know where to seek help.But my message has not
appeared.It would be nice if someone informed me the norms to be
followed for seeking information here. Thanks.
shrikant July 28th, 2014 at 2:53 pm
That is amusing. This time my message appeared immediately. Two

days ago when the message did not appear I tried to post it again
and the system generated message asked me why do you want to
repeat the message, you have already posted One of those many
mysteries of the software that suddenly decides go RAW on you and
you dont know where you are.Should I post my query again ?
Joseph Webber July 29th, 2014 at 9:10 am
Any chance of a reply (July 15)?
Asis Roy Choudhury July 29th, 2014 at 5:08 pm
I have a portable drive that has some files in it. Somehow all of a
sudden the files in there are not visible or retrievable. Connecting it
to a computer USB port, I can only see a message saying the drive
needs to be formatted. so I have formatted the drive and loss all the
data. How can I recover the data again?
clinton August 4th, 2014 at 8:32 am
Hi I have a western digital 500gig when I go to test disk it pick it up

as 1tb which is weird. Im doing a quick search and it only did 1216 in
1 hour is it normal. .
Amit August 5th, 2014 at 3:32 am
Hi, when I executed Quick Search and afterwards Deep Search,

partitions were not found. What can I do?
sid August 18th, 2014 at 10:03 pm
Thank you very much for a well documented solution. With your write
up i was able to save our CEOs data.
Ryoka August 24th, 2014 at 7:23 am
Hi.
I need some help
I have a 1tb Seagate hdd. It suddenly became RAW
I followed all the steps . But I got my files on quick search
I didnt have too deep search to get them.
So I pressed q and wrote a partion table.
It didnt ask for any back up just told to restart to take effect
I booted back to w7 but the hdd is now showing drive inaccessible
What should I do?
I can still see my files in testdisk quick search on the first go

Please help
BJ August 25th, 2014 at 11:44 pm
Dear James Litten,
Please advise whether the process described in your original post can
be applied to HDDs which have been encrypted using Windows
BitLocker?
If not then whats the best way to recover data from HDDs encrypted
using Windows BitLocker?
Many thanks,
BJ
leejay August 31st, 2014 at 8:26 am
is this procedure works into a flash drives?
Shuaib September 1st, 2014 at 6:52 pm
Hi
I have followed all instructions but once I get to quick search and
deeper serach it says no partitions found.
I am trying to recover data from a 16gb Sandisk flash disk but the
size in the testdisk application says 64Mib. I also selected default
boot at 32 bit. Could this have made a difference?
Any help? Thanking you in advance
Al September 6th, 2014 at 4:32 pm
Dear James Litten,

Actually, I have a problem with this procedure.
In the disk selection part, TestDisk does not show my device (which
is the 1TB WD external hard) that turned into RAW system even
though it is visible in My Computer. What shall I do now?
Milan Prica September 7th, 2014 at 1:46 pm
Worked like a charm thanks. I had same issue with my primary

system hard. System started to get slow. Ran a scandisk and bam,
suddenly Windows BSOD on boot Cant find mountable boot volume.
System partition suddenly went raw on me.
Tried this and only problem was that P command wouldnt list my
files from damaged partition. Took a chance and applied fix and now
partition is accessible and system boots again.
Thanks again.
Danu September 9th, 2014 at 12:41 pm

Thanks to your article I have a same problem, my harddisk system
RAW because cable is not good connected And now with testdisk,
file system gone health and im can access Drive D, booting
windows
Thanks alot.
admin September 10th, 2014 at 9:52 pm
XP Wont Boot :( Repair Series Part 1: POST and MBR Issues An

HTML Game Using Only Web Standards
2016 Unknown Kadath Entries (RSS) Comments (RSS)

Html5 Litten Com How To Fix External Disk Drive Suddenly Bec

Enviado por

Dados do documento

Título original

Direitos autorais

Formatos disponíveis

Compartilhar este documento

Compartilhar ou incorporar documento

Opções de compartilhamento

Você considera este documento útil?

Este conteúdo é inapropriado?

Direitos autorais:

Formatos disponíveis

Html5 Litten Com How To Fix External Disk Drive Suddenly Bec

Enviado por

Direitos autorais:

Formatos disponíveis

Unknown Kadath

How To Fix: External Disk Drive James Litten has been

THIS POST IS OUTDATED

As with many similar situations in life the appropriate response is

look at the causes, fixes and preventative measures for instances

Attempting to run chkdsk in an attempt to repair the problem will give

CHKDSK is not available for RAW drives.

Properties of the drive show that both used and free

Why does it happen and how to avoid it

How do you fix it

Before proceeding beyond this point, you need to be aware of the

2. You DO NOT WANT TO WRITE ANYTHING TO THE RAW DRIVE

Do you want to recover anything extra

Repair partition table and boot sector

THIS POST IS OUTDATED

In order to repair the most common problems that cause an external

This method allows us to work on the drive without attempting to

TestDisk is a console application so you have to use your keyboard to

Choose No Log and hit enter

Say Y if it asks if the disk was made in Vista/Win7 (even if it was

Lets look at the data on that partition press

Press Y to confirm the boot sector repair

Regardless of whether a boot sector repair is required or not, you will

Now remove the PartedMagic CD and shutdown the computer

THIS POST IS OUTDATED

Tags: data recovery, undelete files, undelete.recover lost files,

pings are currently closed.

353 Responses to How To Fix: External Disk Drive

Lucy January 13th, 2013 at 7:06 pm

Worked! Thank you so much!

JP January 14th, 2013 at 4:23 am

Here is a similar situation that I worked on with a 1TB external

See if what we tried there helps you.

JP January 14th, 2013 at 5:04 am

JH January 14th, 2013 at 4:09 pm

James, a similar situation with a 1T SimpleSave MD1000h on my HP

Check_FAT: Cant read FAT boot sector.

My issue is that W7 sees this drive, but cannot read it because it

Thanks in advance for your help,

admin January 14th, 2013 at 5:05 pm

I do many repairs there and either myself or someone else would

JH January 14th, 2013 at 5:15 pm

I am currently running the quick search but it is very slow.

Analyze cylinder 305/953868: 00%

Read error at 305/2/1 (lbs=620608)

DianeNemea January 16th, 2013 at 7:43 pm

Raj January 16th, 2013 at 8:08 pm

Where do i find the PartedMagic Linux boot CD and TestDisk CD ?

Raj January 16th, 2013 at 8:29 pm

Thanks i figured out.

No partition found or selected for recovery

DianeNemea January 16th, 2013 at 8:39 pm

admin January 16th, 2013 at 8:40 pm

It is too difficult to assist with a repair in the blog comments but

You could try recovering the data.

EDIT:Just saw your comment on being able to mount it so you can

lavoo January 22nd, 2013 at 4:25 pm

admin January 22nd, 2013 at 4:56 pm

Some additional information :-

mechi January 25th, 2013 at 4:41 pm

after all attempts it finally displayed No partition found or selected

admin January 25th, 2013 at 5:04 pm

That means this technique may not be for your situation.

b) And fortunetly if I see (try to copy)files(example : .mp3/.mp4)