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Need HELP with testdisk, trouble writing found partition

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by thomashuang2

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Hello,
I'm backpacking in Australia and I'm in Darwin now. An idiot who is living in the same hostel has a problem with his external hdd. Somehow he deleted his partition. The drive shows up as unallocated. (he's french, I think he said something about a popup telling him he was going to lose all his data, I assume he must have formatted his drive)

I ran WD's disk tools and it said the drive was fine, so I downloaded testdisk and found the lost FAT32 partition using the "none" partition type.
The boot sector was bad so I restored the backup and could read the file list afterwards.
I tried to go back and write the partition back into the table but it tells me "write not available because 'none' selected"
What do I do now?

I tried to search for the lost partition with "intel partition" but it won't find anything under that type.

12 replies

by nepenthe0

I'm a bit puzzled - you are attempting to restore the MBR on an external hard drive. Normally the external HD is for backup and supplemental storage, and is configured as a [i]logical[/i] drive, not a [i]primary[/i] (bootable) drive.

With the external HD configured as a [/i]primary[/i] drive, your computer is faced with a [i]dual boot[/i] scenario, and it may be as confused as I am.

Please post back in this thread with clarification, and perhaps TR folks can come up with the answer.

Rick/Portland, OR

by computercookie

Darwin isn't the end of the earth, I'm sure you can find an internet cafe' with help!!!

by oh smeg

Darwin is very advanced it's so advanced that you can make your Dope Deal on your Credit Card and then go down to the beach at night roll a splif about 118 inches long and smoke it as you watch what is called there the Refugee Regatta. :0

Of course the fact that a Darwin Stubby is 80 Onces and doesn't travel at all well means that it has to be drunk up there so it doesn't leave Darwin in the bottle at least. As it is brewed in Cairns it can only go to Darwin before going off. Really very cleaver if you consider the thought put into preventing anyone else selling the Darwin Product.

Of course it is sent overseas but then it is watered down and sold as American Beer which no sane person drinks. :D

Col

by oh smeg

Is because the HDD gets unplugged without using the Safely Remove Option. On any HDD there should be a Partition and some slack unused space if there is 1 partition on the drive of course if there are more made there will be more depending on what they are and how the drive was formatted.

Anyway if you can see Files in there but not access them I would tend to think that the Partition Tables/Master Boot Record whatever you wish to call it has been trashed and you need to use a Data Recovery Application to rebuild the Partition Tables. On Tracks Easy Recovery is the best for this job but it's also very expensive so it's not the use once and throw away type thing, though it is considerably cheaper than the cost of a Data Recovery House, Depending on how willing the person is to pay for recovering his Data you may be able to =buy the On Track Application but you can use the other type of Recovery Software which recovers the Files from the HDD after a Partition has been made.

If you want to search for a suitable Data Recovery Application here is a short list of the more common ones available.

http://tinyurl.com/273ay5

http://tinyurl.com/rmvrv

http://tinyurl.com/yvrsl

http://tinyurl.com/yyk8cm

http://tinyurl.com/382vm

http://tinyurl.com/ynwnel

http://tinyurl.com/nc4kx

http://tinyurl.com/2wox7l

http://tinyurl.com/374d8b

http://tinyurl.com/djw6u

http://tinyurl.com/f73se

http://tinyurl.com/8bd3f

http://tinyurl.com/afu2j

While the last 2 are from the same company they are very different products. Win Hex should only be considered foe use by someone who knows Hex Inside Out while Davory is a great cheap General Purpose Application.

Personally I prefer the On Track Option but it's anything but cheap. However because I use this type of software a lot it's paid for itself many times over by now, for a cheaper option Spin Rite from Gibson Research or Stella have both very good reputations by other TR members.

Col

by thomashuang2

hello,
It's an external WD Passport 2.5" 80gb drive. the found partition is listed as "P" which I assume is primary.
I'm not really an expert on the subject so I'm not sure what everything means or exactly what to do. I've just fooled around with stuff since i was a young.

I dont want to pay for software. besides, this french guy and italian guy who traveled with my in my rental campervan cheated me out of a couple hundred dollars because they refused to share the costs evenly by 1/3rd halfway through our roadtrip and I ended up with 1/2 the cost. I'm only doing this just because I have some experience about the subject and I'd feel guilty if I didn't help out.

But if there isn't any freeware software I can get to recover the partition, then I think this will be as far as I'll go. I've wasted enough time on his own troubles.

by oh smeg

And format the drive. Tell them to use the Safely Remove Option from now on and that will be the end of things. The drive will work again when plugged to a NB and everything will be fine. Of course any data on the drive will be lost.

Col

by computercookie

OK, I made fun of Rick's handle, not being nasty.

Nasty would be, Smeg is missing a consonant and vowel or that Col will be a sobbing cane toad when he wakes up on the 12th of June.

by oh smeg

This time it's much more fun to stomp on a cockroach when they think that have a chance of winning. :D

Now I wonder what that's all about as I don't have any idea at all about Football. :p

I just have a Kiwi constantly tell me how bad those Cane Toads are and how great the Cockroach's are. But as she wears lambs wool cloths to attract Kiwi Males I don't really think what she says counts. :^0

Col

by oh smeg

Knowing that a KIWI Likes Sheep is way too easy and I don't know anyone stupid enough to take the other side. :p

Not to sure about the Football though, but then anyone silly enough to think that chasing a bit of leather round some grass is [b]Real Sport[/b] needs all of their money for the treatment that they require. The only people who actually benefit from that are the ones involved in playing it because they get paid to do it, the rest pay to watch it now how silly is that? Yes I know if no one watched it they wouldn't play it but would that be a Loss? ?:|

Col ]:)

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