500GB HDD suddenly reports that its only 99MB?

[Nesh]

I need your help.

Something really strange happened to my laptops main drive.

So I power off my laptop and a few hours later I switch it on and I notice that Windows 7 dont boot up. It shows the windows 7 loading symbol and then it restarts and asks me to repair or start windows normally.

If I choose to start windows normally it does the same thing.
If I choose to repair, my laptop enters the Samsung repairing screen and just gets stuck there. It doesnt load the repairing process.

So I take out the HDD and put it in an external case and connect it to another computer. It says that its only 99 MBs with only a boot folder in it. This is what Windows reserves automatically but the rest of the drive is as if it doesnt exist.

What on earth happened? How do I recover the files that are somewhere still in the HDD??? How do I make it back into its proper capacity?

The HDD didnt have any bad sectors or damages because I do a check every once a month. Last time I did it was a week ago.

There are files I need in there. Hours of work

 

[Bludd]

Stop writing to the disk immediately. Then try a recovery program like Getdataback.

If you're lucky, you just had your partition info overwritten and all the data is there. If you're unlucky, the drive has physical errors which means it will just get worse and worse the more you try to access it.

 

[Nesh]

Would GetDataBack recognize the hidden partition?

 

[Bludd]

Would GetDataBack recognize the hidden partition?

Well, it's not a hidden partition. It's more like the partition is gone because the partition info is gone, but GDB can scan sectors and it can identify MFTs so you can recover files that aren't overwritten.

That's why it's important not to write anymore to the disk.

 

[Nesh]

Well, it's not a hidden partition. It's more like the partition is gone because the partition info is gone, but GDB can scan sectors and it can identify MFTs so you can recover files that aren't overwritten.

That's why it's important not to write anymore to the disk.

something is definitely wrong.
While GDB is trying to find the HDD it is unresponsive for too much time. F*ck

 

[orangpelupa]

Probably the hdd is broken. Yes it can happen suddenly without any prior indication.

Try connecting it directly to pc motherboard not through USB.

If it's still can work, you can recover using photorec for very slow and deep file search.


Use recuva for quick search.

You also can repair the partition table using... I forgot


Edit

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

Years ago I used acronis' package to recover files from my drive. Might want to give that a try as well.

Other than that I don't get why people depending on their pc for work don't invest in a backup solution. Something simple as a mini USB stick or network drive and a scheduled backup task would have prevented exactly this for not even a 100 euros.

 

[orangpelupa]

Years ago I used acronis' package to recover files from my drive. Might want to give that a try as well.

Other than that I don't get why people depending on their pc for work don't invest in a backup solution. Something simple as a mini USB stick or network drive and a scheduled backup task would have prevented exactly this for not even a 100 euros.

Heck, even in companies, data backup is not considered are common

Btw I used syncthing running invisible in background for backup. But not for all folder. Have no space

Gonna buy xiaomi wifi router with 1tb hdd but money is funneled for psvr lol. It's only 150 dollars though.

 

[Nesh]

Probably the hdd is broken. Yes it can happen suddenly without any prior indication.

Try connecting it directly to pc motherboard not through USB.

If it's still can work, you can recover using photorec for very slow and deep file search.


Use recuva for quick search.

You also can repair the partition table using... I forgot


Edit

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

I m kinda confused with the TestDisk. It gives me different examples than the ones I see in their "how to" example and I am kind of unsure what to do

Stop writing to the disk immediately. Then try a recovery program like Getdataback.

If you're lucky, you just had your partition info overwritten and all the data is there. If you're unlucky, the drive has physical errors which means it will just get worse and worse the more you try to access it.

Ok GDB found all files. I recovered at least tthe important ones.
It doesnt seem to be a damaged disk after all. But I need to recover the partition with the files intact to create a full back up

Strangely Disk Management does see the missing partition as healthy and active with a letter assigned to it.
Is there something I can do directly from the Disk Management without losing files?

Note that the drive with the problem is the HDD which is supposed to be the internal in my other laptop. It is now connected externally on another laptop

 

[orangpelupa]

I m kinda confused with the TestDisk. It gives me different examples than the ones I see in their "how to" example and I am kind of unsure what to do

Ok GDB found all files. I recovered at least tthe important ones.
It doesnt seem to be a damaged disk after all. But I need to recover the partition with the files intact to create a full back up

Strangely Disk Management does see the missing partition as healthy and active with a letter assigned to it.
Is there something I can do directly from the Disk Management without losing files?

Note that the drive with the problem is the HDD which is supposed to be the internal in my other laptop. It is now connected externally on another laptop

its detected as RAW. so its soft-broken.

testdisk should be able to repair the partition but yeah it is confusing to use.

run testdisk_win on admin command prompt
select the correct drive to repair the partition.

keep spamming Enter until you go to "analyze" then Enter again.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Step_By_Step#Partition_table_type_selection

should be finish on the "Save the partition table or search for more partitions?" part.

 

[Lightman]

I use:

- Crystal DiskInfo V6 to read SMART data and give me an overview of disk health
- R-Studio to scan for any traces of data and partitions with option of recovering single files or whole partitions to secondary drive
- Acronis backup software to do binary image of drive before I even try to recover anything to have that possibility of going back to corrupted state if any further steps cause irreversible damage to your data

In most cases I recover lion share of data from disks with bad blocks, so if yours is in good health then that ratio should be closer to 100%

Good luck!

 

[Nesh]

its detected as RAW. so its soft-broken.

testdisk should be able to repair the partition but yeah it is confusing to use.

run testdisk_win on admin command prompt
select the correct drive to repair the partition.

keep spamming Enter until you go to "analyze" then Enter again.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Step_By_Step#Partition_table_type_selection

should be finish on the "Save the partition table or search for more partitions?" part.

Is it normal that Analyze takes so long??
Its been more than three hours and it has analyzed only 3622 out of the 75200 cylinders

 

[orangpelupa]

Is it normal that Analyze takes so long??
Its been more than three hours and it has analyzed only 3622 out of the 75200 cylinders

yeah and no. sometime its fast sometime it long. the very basic analysis (the first menu) no more than a few hours. but i also remember going it overnight. its also no guarantee that the "quick" analysis works.

the deeper search/analysis can take days.

but i only used that to recover partition only for a few cases. im sure its less than 10 cases. so i dont really know what is the normal duration

EDIT:
does your HDD spinning properly with healthy sound or making sick sound?

 

[Nesh]

yeah and no. sometime its fast sometime it long. the very basic analysis (the first menu) no more than a few hours. but i also remember going it overnight. its also no guarantee that the "quick" analysis works.

the deeper search/analysis can take days.

but i only used that to recover partition only for a few cases. im sure its less than 10 cases. so i dont really know what is the normal duration

EDIT:
does your HDD spinning properly with healthy sound or making sick sound?

The sound is normal. Its the deep search that takes too long.
It doesnt add up though. I get different things than what is suggested in the link with the steps.
Its as if the drive has no real issue. But the steps it takes me are also different
A) first of all E and F are the same Hard Drive. It shows it as too. The two on the top seem to be the same as E and F. The 2 at the top appeared only after I did a deep search which I didnt let finish. The first time I run the program It showed me only C E and F

B) Lets say I select drive F. It tells automatically selects Non Partitioned Area. Its kind of normal because I never partitioned the disk. Drive E seems to be an automatic partitioned that Windows 7 did on my other laptop since the Hard Disk was the one that my laptop was booting up for Windows


C) Selecting None leads me directly to Advance probably because it sees no reason to Analyse.

d) but even if I choose analyze it shows me this with a letter P next to the drive. No L nor D letters. P shows me all the files. Clearly all files are accessible


e) A quick search tells me that structire is OK

d) In Aadvance it tells me that everything is Ok. Rebuilding BS doesnt do a difference


I have simply no clue what to do in order for the normal partition to be visible

 

[orangpelupa]

instead of selecting none

how about selcting intel?

i have never used none on that step.


btw try checking on Disk Management again. maybe after you did the rebuilt it can read it as NTFS instead of RAW.

 

[orangpelupa]

@Nesh

found simpler guide with picture than testdisk official wiki:

http://www.sevenforums.com/software/190430-regain-lost-drive-using-test-disk-illustrated-guide.html

after the structure is OK, write the table by selecting write.

 

[Cyan]

have you tried the command Attrib? This is an excellent informative thread, just in case this happens to someone else or you need to help someone in the same situation

 

[Nesh]

have you tried the command Attrib? This is an excellent informative thread, just in case this happens to someone else or you need to help someone in the same situation

Nope. I havent tried it. What exactly does it do?
By the way I found that the EaseUS Data recovery wizard works very well for recovering the data. Now I need to try orangpelupa's link to see if it will be corrected

Interestingly EaseUS Partition manager lists the drive as NTFS instead of RAW. What the hell is going on here?

 

[Nesh]

Unlike the native disk management in Windows this is what I get from EaseUS. It lists it as NTFS instead of RAW.
Farther more as you can see the local HDD (Drive C) is set as BOOT.
I believe that F should have also been Boot so that as an internal HDD my laptop would be able to boot up.
The program doesnt give me the option to change it into Boot though

 

[Cyan]

Nope. I havent tried it. What exactly does it do?
By the way I found that the EaseUS Data recovery wizard works very well for recovering the data. Now I need to try orangpelupa's link to see if it will be corrected

Interestingly EaseUS Partition manager lists the drive as NTFS instead of RAW. What the hell is going on here?

It's basically a MSDOS command that could prove very useful for you. I told the story in another subforum, and it happened a couple of months ago.

A few weeks ago my OSes subject teacher had to fix a pendrive someone gave to him that didn't show any content at all, but the free space on the device clearly indicated that space was that there was data in it, just invisible.

He tried with Linux, with Windows, with his Mac, etc etc etc, nothing worked! I'd call it an almost perfect solution. Can you imagine what was the fix? Using MS-DOS and changing the attributes with the ATTRIB command!