HDD bad sector or mbr repair, partitions are not showing

[Asif Haque]

Some of my partitions are not showing up. Except c partition, d, e, f partitions are missing and called "free space". I didn't formatted or re partitioned them. I think the sectors are bad and mbr should be repaired. There are so many important files i have in those partitions. NEED QUICK HELP. 

[Roawoao]

You should take a raw image of the drive first and work off that. If you can figure out how to use Testdisk you may be able to restore the partitions but if you do it wrong you can wipe out the data. So unless you really know what your doing take an image of the drive and try and recover the partitions from that. 

 

Possibly even clone the drive bit for bit (not any smart clone operation) and work on that if this is your first time attempting to repair a partition.

 

Alternatively if you don't care about filenames or folder structure data recovery software can get your files as well.

 

If you suspect hardware failure (bad sectors or other problems) all your data is at risk and you should immediately create an image of the drive if you do not already have a backup. Since the partitions are already damaged and missing you cannot really target what to backup first.

 

Obviously do not attempt to format, write, ... anything to that free space.

[Asif Haque]

Roawoao, Thanks for the advice. How do i backup or create image of my hdd partitions? I have no files in there showing now. How can I repair this problem?

[Roawoao]

39 minutes ago, Asif Haque said:

Roawoao, Thanks for the advice. How do i backup or create image of my hdd partitions? I have no files in there showing now. How can I repair this problem?

First of all you need a drive at least as large as the drive your trying to image.

 

Ideally if this is your first time you want a third drive to store a backup image of the drive in case you do something horrible. (Overwriting the source drive)

 

http://clonezilla.org/show-live-doc-content.php?topic=clonezilla-live/doc/01_Save_disk_image

BUT, you must use the advanced options and select dd as the imaging software. (Don't touch any other options)

Select -q1 Only dd

 

http://clonezilla.org/clonezilla-live/doc/01_Save_disk_image/advanced/09-advanced-param.php

 

If the clone operation fails on a disk error then things will get more complicated and you may need even more advanced tools like ddrescue which try to read the drive even if there are errors.

 

Once you save the image to a portable hard drive or something you will want to clone it back to a blank drive which you will work from and keep your original drive in a safe place. (Don't try and overwrite it or repair it as a single mistake can wipe out your data) Whatever you do never write to your original disk with this image tool. When your restoring the image to a new drive make sure the original source drive is not connected at all.

 

http://clonezilla.org/show-live-doc-content.php?topic=clonezilla-live/doc/02_Restore_disk_image

 

You can set the advanced options to dd again as well. 

 

After you clone the drive you should have an identical known working hard drive with the damaged partitions.

 

Now you can go and use testdisk. ( http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Download )

 

You basically want it to look at the extended partition and see if it can detect your missing partitions and it can restore them by re-writing their partition information using the recovery or remaining information. If it works when you restart the partitions will magically re-appear. This operation will write to the disk and should not be done directly on your original drive as this can cause data loss if it screws up.

 

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

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

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

 

=============================================================================================

If the above method is too advanced for you there are more easy to use solutions as well. (it is just how I've done it long ago when recovering or imaging computers)

 

You first want to clone your entire drive but there are commercial versions such as  

http://www.acronis.com/en-us/personal/computer-backup/

 

Which you would use to create a raw image of the entire disk and clone it to another drive.

 

Then you can use things like,

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/31950-partition-recover-deleted-partitions-windows.html

 

But note if the disk was damaged odd things might happen. Accidentally deleting a partition is trivial to recover from but if there was hardware failure or corruption then things can get complex.

 

=============================================================================================

Your priority should be to get a good image/backup of your drive as soon as possible especially if this is your first time attempting a recovery.

 

It doesn't take much to make a partition disappear but most of your data is probably still there right now unless you ran something like diskpart clean all or some other disk wiping tool.

[Asif Haque]

Thank you very much. I'm trying.

[Roawoao]

10 minutes ago, Asif Haque said:

Thank you very much. I'm trying.

No problem just be careful not to overwrite anything and copy any important files on your still accessible system drive if you have any. What makes you think there is a hard drive bad sector problem did anything warn you about errors or something odd happen before the partitions disappeared?

 

Also the drives your imaging to and cloning to must be ideally a equal or larger (preferably a bit larger) than your system drive otherwise the raw image will not fit. Also raw imaging can take much longer as every bit is going to be imaged and likewise when your writing it back to the new drive it will have to write every bit regardless if it is free space or not. (Given you have a free space chunk that was a bunch of data)

[Asif Haque]

I found on a website about showing "unallocated" and "nothing". Mine's "nothing", I mean 'totally free space', which is dissapointing because I have 1700 GBs of files (almost full ) there in the partitions. I saw a video on repairing this kind of problem using HDD Regenerator and Test Disk saying mbr table missing/ bad sector repair. My partitions were still good last night. Today morning I turned on the pc, and Surprise, missing partitions.

 

[Roawoao]

5 minutes ago, Asif Haque said:

I found on a website about showing "unallocated" and "nothing". Mine's "nothing", I mean 'totally free space', which is dissapointing because I have 1700 GBs of files (almost full ) there in the partitions. I saw a video on repairing this kind of problem using HDD Regenerator and Test Disk saying mbr table missing/ bad sector repair. My partitions were still good last night. Today morning I turned on the pc, and Surprise, missing partitions.

Just because it says nothing is there doesn't mean the bits representing your files are not actually physically still there. It is almost always partition corruption that would cause it to all suddenly vanish. A raw image of the drive will lock in that data so that you can recover off the image instead of working on the original source drive. This will help prevent accidental overwrites. The raw imaging aspect is critical as you want to copy even the "free space/nothing/unallocated" area as that is where you know your data was previously.

 

I would try and get a raw image done first before attempting any repairs. Without any backup any further damage, corruption or if you make a mistake could cause total data loss.