Help with HDD. Is it a Partitioning Problem?

[Qqmike]

Sorry, until someone steps in with better ideas, I can only toss out one more thing to look at, I am not expert in this at all. Btw, is your system a UEFI+GPT, or the older BIOS+MBR?

You might look at gdisk if you have a GPT. I messed with this a little bit, and for my small set of experiments concluded this:

Summary
For a UEFI+GPT setup, if you damaged your GPT structure, or if you accidentally lost/damaged your partitions, you may be able to use TestDisk and gdisk to recover. One goal here is to see how TestDisk worked on GPT. Good news: It recovers deleted partitions. But: I could not use TestDisk to repair either the Partition Header or the Partition Table entries. For those two tasks, I used gdisk. I did five experiments. There are references included along the way for everything. (If you can use TestDisk to fix the damage described in experiments 4 & 5, let us know.)

https://www.kubuntuforums.net/showth...417#post372417

[technomancer]

Hello all,

My laptop used to dual boot Win 8 and Kubuntu, until yesterday when my computer wouldn’t start. The little power button would sometimes flash for a moment. I cleared the ram (unplugged it, removed the battery, and held the powerbutton for several minutes). I took it apart, removed the CMOS, and put it together again. It turned on for a second, and a weak, staticy beep went out, and then there was nothing. I took the HDD out, and it is plugged into my spare computer.

Here’s what I’ve found:

• Windows Explorer will not detect the HDD, although it will show up in the “Safely Remove Hardware” dialog.
• Trinity Rescue Kit will not recognize it
• Only Hiren’s boot CD will recognize it, and ONLY if it is plugged into the computer at startup. It shows up in Win Explorer, but cannot navigate it (it says please insert drive”).

I have tried various partitioning softwares to recover the partition tables, and most fail for various reasons (I can retest them and give you details if you need them). Only ONE program detects anything, and that is TESTDISK.

TestDisk will detect partition tables to recover, and will also detect files. I am backing up my files with TestDisk as we speak, and it is taking forever. I am currently unemployed, and need to get my old system back to send out applications. Can you help me?

Screenshots of testdisk below:

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When I start TestDisk, here’s what I see (line 2 and 4 are the broken HDDs – ST500LT0)


When I select Line 2 (sdb), and click “intel partition:”


What I get after “Quick Scan for Intell Partitions”


Here’s what I get when I select “EFI GPT” partitions:


And after I start a deep scan of “EFI GPT:”


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Any help will be appreciated beyond expression. Thank you!

TM