The affected SSD is removed from a laptop with 4 partitions to be used in an external enclosure, one primary partition (C:) cannot be found in Windows, but could be read in Ubuntu. After I was trying to fix it with TestDisk in Windows, now it cannot be found or read in Ubuntu as well. I don't know what I did with TestDisk but the MFT was corrupted per Chkdsk and could not be repaired.  I used active@ partition recovery demo edition and made a raw image of that partition on another HDD. The superscan on the original disk found that C: partition in a bad status with missing $MFT, $MFTMirror and other attributes but the superscan on the raw image found that C: partition in an excellent status with all the files that I can preview in binary form.   The C: drive is about 100G, Im tempted to purchase the full version of active@ partition recovery (btw, if you know a better alternative please let me know) to recover the partition from the raw image , but should I do it in place or on another HDD? And there are several things not that clear to me:   Does what has happened suggest there are physical damages on my original SSD? Should I stop working on it now to prevent further loss? the other three partition, two seem pretty normal, one is called "system reserved". I don't know if MBR should be on this partition  or the corrupted C:? I did managed to write booting information on both this partition and the C: with TestDisk that completely corrupted it. I'm still confused where should the MBR be. If it's on C: can the active@ partition recovery recover it? The active@partition recovery found loads of volumes (can post a screenshot later), except for the good C: that I can recognize and plan to recover, I don't know what to do with the rests. Some are with FAT boot sector which I wonder why, and named "EFIxxxx" , and loads are simply with bad sectors.
46283
I had a Windows 7 installation on my 1TB SSD laptop with 4 primary partitions. I wanted to install Lubuntu Linux but the process failed with an error which kind of said:     cannot write MBR   It gave me an option to put an MBR somewhere else or to boot without MBR. None of these options worked and it became a useless install. After this failed dual boot attempt, Windows would give a BSOD wit Code 007 ending - translated to inaccessible boot device. That is a huge NTFS partition and I don't think I have any other media to back it up before formatting it.  My only option is somehow rebuilding the old MBR. Hence I started creating a whole bunch of live USB boot environments  including Super GRUB Disk and MiniTool Partition Editor Live CD, but none of this could ever help me recover my lost MBR.  Win PE 4.0 reported the partition as bad disc and the latest version did not even have an option for MBR. I managed to create a live USB with Testdisk Running on Ubuntu. Whatever partition was seen as HPFS on quick  search was written in the MBR and after this the disc is totally unreadable. Earlier I could see my data through Linux and now I can see nothing.  Here are my questions:   When some data could be read (but Windows would not boot) the MBR was shown as dynamic MBR. As far as I know dynamic MBR is a Windows concept and my Linux attempt would not have converted it. While installing Linux I tried to delete 2 primary partitions which I found to be not really useful (I backed up their data first). So I am not sure what created the dynamic MBR.  Did my dual install convert those basic MBR to dynamic MBR? How did that happen? Here is a screenshot of my deep search attempt with TestDisk which is still in progress. I can see 4 NTFS partitions and one of these two system partitions should be the original MBR. When I tried to write both these system partitions (after stopping the deep search momentarily) I got an error like "partition not found". The file system utility showed me that there is no backup sector and that may be the reason why it cannot be read.  What other Resorts do I have, other than doing a plain format and then using some recovery tool to recover all my lost data? I am not even sure I will recover the folder names.  What other options should I be trying to restore my old MBR so Windows can boot?      Update  as of last I managed to create a live USB w/ W7  I used AOMEI Partition assistant 6.0 and on deeper  search I can see the 909 gb partition - it wont let me select it for recovery. I am sorry if my earlier Q was not clear. I referred to restoring an MBR from a partition . What happened earlier  - superficial search revealed all old partitions but NOT this one   and the later partitions showed up on Deep search &amp; I can select Other partitions for recovery but for this one. It wont let me select the partition I want  Here are some more screen shots    So in summary all that happened is   4 primary windows 7 partition -->  wanted to install Linux so I deleted 2 non bootable partitions after backing them up  ended up with BSOD ( inaccessible boot device ) and noticed that some windows partitions showed up as Dynamic MBR  (using Live USB Linux,gparted )  Use standard testdisk procedure to write MBR from the superficial NTFS-HDFS partition.  this is where I screwed up . Hindsight I should have really done a deep search and caught the 901gb partition to write MBR. I am not sure if I can undo this action  after this - life gets worse. I am  on a ventilator ! Now C is unreadable by windows and linux both and testdisk cannot list file ( see screenshots ) and I have been using a series of live USB's with some recovery s/w but no luck. ALL I want is to recreate that 901gb partition and the boot partition and put the MBR on the latter so I can get my windows 7 back again
9141
I've recently destroyed my old laptop... but I've saved the ssd. Inside there was a SSD with Ubuntu 19.04 on it and the disk is encrypted.  I've bought a new laptop, and added my old SSD on top of the one already inside the new laptop.  On the new SSD I have Ubuntu 19.10, and from there I can access the data of my old SSD but I was wondering if there was a way to make the old SSD bootable ? Maybe creating a MBR or something like that ?  In the BIOS/UEFI I can see the old SSD in the SATA disks, but it's not in the bootable options, and I've activated the PXE Legacy.  Thanks in advance
88969
An external 3½" HDD seems to be in danger of failing — it's making .  I've acquired a replacement drive, and want to know the best strategy to get the data off of the dubious drive with the best chance of saving as much as possible.  There are some directories that are more important than others.  However, I'm guessing that picking and choosing directories is going to reduce my chances of saving the whole thing.  I would also have to mount it, dump a file listing, and then unmount it in order to be able to effectively prioritize directories.  Adding in the fact that it's time-consuming to do this, I'm leaning away from this approach.  I've considered just using dd, but I'm not sure how it would handle read errors or other problems that might prevent only certain parts of the data from being rescued, or which could be overcome with some retries, but not so many that they endanger other parts of the drive from being saved.  I guess ideally it would do a single pass to get as much as possible and then go back to retry anything that was missed due to errors.  Is it possible that copying more slowly — e.g. pausing every x MB/GB — would be better than just running the operation full tilt, for example to avoid any overheating issues?  For the "where is your backup" crowd: this actually is my backup drive, but it also contains some non-critical and bulky stuff, like music, that aren't backups, i.e. aren't backed up.  The drive has not exhibited any clear signs of failure other than this somewhat ominous sound.  I did have to fsck a few errors recently — orphaned inodes, incorrect free blocks/inodes counts, inode bitmap differences, zero dtime on deleted inodes; about 20 errors in all.  The filesystem of the partition is ext3.
72575
I have an acer V7 which came with a 1TB HDD, 24GB SSD and Windows 8 installed. I have installed Ubuntu onto the SSD and formatted the main partitions of the HDD. However, I also notice 3 other partitions on the HDD marked msftres, msftdata. Is it safe to format these also so that I have one contiguous drive partition or will I be wiping something important like boot or bios data?
75016
The folder is massive (390GB) and contains many different files. The file system is ext4  I was about to copy this file to another hard drive using gksudo nautilus so I didnt have do a massive chmod operation on the destination hard drive, but then I accidentally hit move to trash, which in gksudo nautilus means permanent deletion. I checked the trash but it's not even an operation...  I have seen tools like testdisk and other recovery tools but none that can recover and whole folder because its made up of different files.   I don't think that this would work but if I deleted the partition could I just recover the whole partition at once?  Or would this be wrong because i have already deleted the partition's content? This is my first job in Linux IT.  I don't have a backup... I was trying to make one because the old backup drive died :(
86375
I was using recuva to find pictures and videos on a windows xp hard drive, but I keep getting an internal error message. Does anyone know of an alternative program for recovering broken and damaged files?  I know that with ubuntu it's sometimes better and I had some more success recovering data from windows computers with ubuntu, I tried find but are there any GUI programs that someone would recommend?
110289
I unplugged my USB stick from Ubuntu 16.04 without the save remove option, but exfat should be fine doing so. No read write was happening, the partition does not use journaling. What I end up with is an unmountable USB stick with checksum error.   What tools are there to recover the partition table or at least the data on the USB stick? What I am doing now is scanning via parted. Has anyone experienced the same problem with exfat and recovery options? Unfortunately parted probably won't detect the partition because .  I also tried to use Partition Wizard on Windows but it failed to detect anything, just showing unallocated space. How do I proceed? are there helpful tools under Windows or Ubuntu?    I also tried to use gpart -v /dev/sdb but it failed to detect anything. On OS X there is a tool called fsck_exfat, is there any on Windows?  update The disk is preinstalled with Parted Magic. After quick search no partition shows up.
11637
A few nights ago I have created a backup of my data on an external 500 GB NTFS USB hard drive.  I have then formatted my computer, reinstalled Ubuntu and started transferring back the data from the external HDD.  Unfortunately some files have became corrupted and Ubuntu is unable to copy them over. The same issue happens if I login using Windows 7.  Disk Utility detects with SMART that there are "a few bad sectors".  Some of files are perfectly intact, but other files cannot be accessed (nor read, copied...) although they are displayed within nautilus and show the correct file size.  Is there anything I can do to recover this data? I have thought of using TestDisk but this utility seems more useful for repairing lost partitions or deleted files.  I have also thought of using ddrescue so I could at least have a low level copy of the disk but I am not sure what use to make of it in order to recover the data!!!
40148
MY NTFS Partition has gotten corrupt somehow (it's a relic from the days when I had Windows installed).     I'm putting the debug output of fdisk and blkid .  At the same time, any OS is unable to mount my root partition, which is located next to my NTFS partition. I'm not sure if this has anything to do with it, though. I get the following error while trying to mount my root partition (sda5)  mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sda5,        missing codepage or helper program, or other error        In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try        dmesg | tail  or so  ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ dmesg | tail [ 1019.726530] Descriptor sense data with sense descriptors (in hex): [ 1019.726533]         72 03 11 04 00 00 00 0c 00 0a 80 00 00 00 00 00  [ 1019.726551]         1a 3e ed 92  [ 1019.726558] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda]  Add. Sense: Unrecovered read error - auto reallocate failed [ 1019.726568] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] CDB: Read(10): 28 00 1a 3e ed 40 00 01 00 00 [ 1019.726584] end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 440331666 [ 1019.726602] JBD: Failed to read block at offset 462 [ 1019.726609] ata1: EH complete [ 1019.726612] JBD: recovery failed [ 1019.726617] EXT4-fs (sda5): error loading journal   When I open gparted (using live CD), I get an exclamation next to my NTFS drive which states   Is there a way to run chkdsk without using windows ?  My attempt to run fsck results in the following :  ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fsck /dev/sda fsck from util-linux-ng 2.17.2 e2fsck 1.41.14 (22-Dec-2010) fsck.ext2: Superblock invalid, trying backup blocks... fsck.ext2: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/sda  The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2 filesystem.  If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2 filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock:     e2fsck -b 8193 &lt;device&gt;   Update: I was able to fix the NTFS partition running chkdsk off Hiren's BootCD, but it seems that the superblock problem still remains.  Update 2: Fixed superblock issue using e2fsck -c /dev/sda5
89263
, I'm starting to believe it is not active.  Last night I started up Task Manager and I see 2 disks - Disk 0 (C:) and Disk 1.    Disk 0 appears to be active -    Disk 1 appears to be not active.  It's been this way for at least 3 hours of active use, both Metro and Desktop use.   This is supposed to be the Solid State part of my Hybrid Drive, but it doesn't seem to be doing anything, at least not from the perspective of the Task Manager tool.  Does anyone know of any additional tools that I could you for analysis or do you know if there is some way to activate this part of the drive?  Thank you in advance!
42873
I've resized my C:\ partition but now I can't boot anymore. I tried to use CHKDSK to analyse the disk but keep getting this error:      CHKDSK does not support RAW disk.    I suppose the partition is damaged or changed to RAW format. So, how can I restore it to NTFS or at least recover my data?
42064
I have a dell laptop that recently "died" (It would get the blue screen of death upon starting) and the hard drive would make a weird cyclic clicking noises.  I wanted to see if I could use some tools on my linux machine to recover the data, so I plugged it into there.  If I run "fdisk" I get:  Disk /dev/sdb: 20.0 GB, 20003880960 bytes 64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 19077 cylinders Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 = 1048576 bytes Disk identifier: 0x64651a0a  Disk /dev/sdb doesn't contain a valid partition table   Fine, the partition table is messed up.  However if I run "testdisk" in attempt to fix the table, it freezes at this point, making the same cyclical clicking noises:  Disk /dev/sdb - 20 GB / 18 GiB - CHS 19078 64 32 Analyse cylinder   158/19077: 00%   I don't really care about the hard drive working again, and just the data, so I ran "gpart" to figure out where the partitions used to be.  I got this:  dev(/dev/sdb) mss(512) chs(19077/64/32)(LBA) #s(39069696) size(19077mb)  * Warning: strange partition table magic 0x2A55. Primary partition(1)    type: 222(0xDE)(UNKNOWN)    size: 15mb #s(31429) s(63-31491)    chs:  (0/1/1)-(3/126/63)d (0/1/32)-(15/24/4)r    hex:  00 01 01 00 DE 7E 3F 03 3F 00 00 00 C5 7A 00 00  Primary partition(2)    type: 007(0x07)(OS/2 HPFS, NTFS, QNX or Advanced UNIX) (BOOT)    size: 19021mb #s(38956987) s(31492-38988478)    chs:  (4/0/1)-(895/126/63)d (15/24/5)-(19037/21/31)r    hex:  80 00 01 04 07 7E FF 7F 04 7B 00 00 BB 6F 52 02   So I tried to mount just to the old NTFS partition, but got an error:  sudo mount -o loop,ro,offset=16123904 -t ntfs /dev/sdb /mnt/usb NTFS signature is missing.   Ugh.  Okay.  But then I tried to get a raw data dump by running  dd if=/dev/sdb of=/home/erik/brokenhd skip=31492 count=38956987    But the file got up to 59885568 bytes, and made the same cyclical clicking noises.  Obviously there is a bad sector, but I don't know what to do about it!  The data is still there... if I view that 57MB file in textpad... I can see raw data from files.  How can I get my data back?  Thanks for any suggestions,  Solution:  I was able to recover about 90% of my data:   Froze harddrive in freezer Used Ddrescue to make a copy of the drive Since Ddrescue wasn't able to get enough of my drive to use testdisk to recover my partitions/file system, I ended up using photorec to recover most of my files
63069
I was trying to put the  onto a thumb drive, when I was asked if I was OK with wiping it (I said yes I as it was blank).  I had to sleep my computer during the wiping, and now I can't do anything with my dive.  When I put it into my computer:    When I click format disk:    In short, the disk never reformats (I get an error message letting me know that Windows was unable to format the drive).  Whats going on, and how do I fix it?
114080
Sony Vaio laptop with Windows 7 Home will not load Windows; automatically goes into startup repair then fails. Unfortunately, there are no restore points and the owner did not create the recovery disks when they purchased the laptop. I have tried the typical things to repair without success; F8 startup options fail (no recovery option available), startup repair fails, repair CD made from a good system fails, booted to another Windows 7 disk fails because its not the same version, CHKDSK, SFC scan, etc.  From a command prompt I can see the recovery partition and it appears to be intact. Is there a way to create the system recovery disks from the recovery partition when Windows will not load?  This unit was purchased at Walmart. The model number is PCG-61611L. Sony's site requires an additional model number to access info. This number is not located on the outside of laptop. Sony indicates there is a text file within Windows which contains this number. Thus far, have not been able to find the file.   F10 and F11 during boot did not work. It appeared F10 tried but all that happened was a row of multi colored pixels across the screen and it froze there.   Saw another post about using gParted to access the drive and change the recovery partition to /boot. Did that and it went farther than before. If successful I will post all the details in case someone else runs into this.   Edit: Found the recovery partition needs to be hidden in order for F10 to work. All that happens when F10 is pressed at startup is it comes to a DOS style boot configuration screen. There are no options for recovery. F11 does nothing. Therefore, I have come to the conclusion the recovery partition may look intact when in actuality it is not functional. The owner will have to purchase recovery disk(s) from Sony since they did not make the recovery disks when prompted.
13541
I wanted to do a clean install and booted from OS X recovery partition. In disk utility I selected "erase" option. SSD was working correctly before that.  Now, if i startup, the only way to proceed is with Internet Recovery  since I cannot boot from hidden recovery partition. After I wait several hours for the recovery image download, I cannot see the SSD either in disk utility or OSX reinstallation.   In terminal   diskutil list   Shows only recovery image 1.8 Gb or so.  So did erase option destroy my ssd?
11526
Yesterday I decided to upgrade my laptop hard drive to an SSD. I was previously running Ubuntu 14.04 on the HDD that came with it. I have installed Ubuntu 14.10 on the SSD.  I would like to mount the old HDD so that I can copy over all my files. So I purchased an enclosure that lets me treat it like an external USB drive. I put the HDD into the enclosure and plugged it in. It is detected and it sees all of the volumes. But it only mounts the boot volume for read/write.  The HDD is 750GB and the SSD is 120GB. When I inspect it in the "Disks" utility I see both hard drives and can easily tell the difference between the two. When I inspect the HDD I see: Partition 1 Ext2 (boot volume), Extended Partition 2, and Partition 5 LVM2 PV.  So clearly it can see the volumes as well. It reports that the disk is ok but has one bad sector. The drive is not encrypted. I am not sure why it shows two volumes of the same size. Probably has to do with it being an LVM volume.  How do I get it to let me read the files from my old installation of Ubuntu?  $ sudo fdisk -l Disk /dev/sda: 223.6 GiB, 240057409536 bytes, 468862128 sectors Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disklabel type: dos Disk identifier: 0x7f79a18e  Device     Boot  Start       End   Sectors   Size Id Type /dev/sda1  *      2048    499711    497664   243M 83 Linux /dev/sda2       501758 468860927 468359170 223.3G  5 Extended /dev/sda5       501760 468860927 468359168 223.3G 8e Linux LVM  Disk /dev/mapper/ubuntu--vg-root: 215.6 GiB, 231479443456 bytes, 452108288 sectors Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk /dev/mapper/ubuntu--vg-swap_1: 7.8 GiB, 8317304832 bytes, 16244736 sectors Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk /dev/sdb: 596.2 GiB, 640135028736 bytes, 1250263728 sectors Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disklabel type: dos Disk identifier: 0x0004f632  Device     Boot  Start        End    Sectors  Size Id Type /dev/sdb1  *      2048     499711     497664  243M 83 Linux /dev/sdb2       501758 1250263039 1249761282  596G  5 Extended /dev/sdb5       501760 1250263039 1249761280  596G 8e Linux LVM
36855
Yesterday, my laptop caught a virus which caused massive damage. Since them, I have been trying to recover important files before reformatting my computer, a task the virus has not made easy.   Restoration points predating the attack have been deleted.  Most of my folders show empty.  My Start menu is essentially empty, with the exception of Trillian and Mirror's Edge. The same goes for my Desktop, which only has programs which were installed after the attack.  Searching for files through my computer is pretty much useless, as it only rarely brings up anything. I suspect most of my files have not been deleted. While my folders show empty, uTorrent still does display them and I can open them from here. Unfortunately, when I select Open Containing Folder, the folder still shows as completely empty even if I'm currently watching a video from that very folder. Further adding evidence to the not-deleted-just-missing theory, the data recovery software I'm using (Restoration) cannot find only find an handful of the missing files.   If they were deleted, I could do a forensic recovery to get them back but since they're probably still somewhere on my computer, just out out of my reach, I can't find them.   Under those circumstances, is there a way I can recover those files?