Missing Partitions

[Rotus]

Just installed Ultimate Edition 3.5. First want to say that I am very happy about the build and it looks great. The issue I am having right now is that I have a 2TB HDD with a few partitions on it. These partitions have photos, music, videos, and other items that I cannot lose. Problem is though, I cannot access them. Using the disk editor it shows the HDD but the partition is blank. NTFS-config does not see the partitions either. Need some help in resolving this issue. If anyone has some ideas please let me know. Thanks!

[Micro]

Hello Rotus, just a few questions. Internal or External, can you see it in the File Manager? If so what is the error given when attempting to mount? For future reference, supplying some hardware info in your signature could prove helpful to determine solutions...

[Rotus]

Sorry about that had not put in my specs yet. Currently running an AMD FX 3.3GHz 6 core processor with 8GB DDR3 RAM and an NVidia GeForce 250GTs 1GB video card (though debating on swapping it to my ATI 2GB card). The hard drives are both internal. I do have external but have no issues mounting those. The primary drive is a 500GB WD that currently has Ultimate Edition installed on it. The second drive is a 2TB WD internal drive. This is the one that is haveing the issues. There are approximately 7 partitions on that drive that are not being seen by the system. They do not show in the file manager or anywhere else. Using the disk utility the hdd shows as one large partition to be formatted as it cannot recognize the partitions on it. Using ntfs-config it does not recognize the partitions either though it worked on Linux Mint. I am currently running gpart and it has detected 2 of the 7 partitions so far and has been running for about an hour now.

[Micro]

So an internal 2TB with 7 primary ntfs partitions, or mixed primary and logical? And why? Jk... And you can only see two. hmmmm. I have taken a single drive with four ntfs partitions and mounted them on my SID box to recover data from a broken raid 1. As a matter of fact they all automounted in four seperate file manager windows at once. I would have to say that if it was me, i would migrate the data off that drive, use gparted and create a gpt table and format in ext4. If you say Linux Mint could see all partitions i would use a live cd and get that squared away. If you need help creating a mount point for that drive i can assist you further. But to not waste you own time, i would say this is your best bet...

[Rotus]

Thanks. Gpart sees two of the partitions, i didn't let it finish before having to shut down so will start it back up again. Gpart being ran in the terminal was the only item to see 2 partitions. Though it stated the sizes were 0 or 7 and the offset sizes were much larger. I believe they were primary partitions. I'll try a live cd for mint and see if i can get them to show back on on there and if i do i will get them reattached. I am thinking the whole issue is the mbr was destroyed somehow and that is causing my problems. Will see though.

[Rotus]

Ok quick update on this. Ran testdisk for approx 5 hours or so (2TB hdd takes a bit to go through) and found all my partitions that were missing. Bad side, it wont write them to make them accessible again due to bad structure. So I am currently using the program to copy all the files to the main hdd and then to some externals I have. After that I will go through and delete the partitions altogether and redo the drive.

[pch.shot]

Logging in as root may yield some joy:
http://www.liberiangeek.net/2012/05/log ... -pangolin/

[Micro]

Good stuff, way to keep at it...

[Rotus]

As of right now all my files were recovered from the lost partitions, or rather finishing due to having to start copying to an external. Ran out of room on my other drive. TestDisk did the trick though. Will go through and revamp that drive once everything has finished copying.

[pch.shot]

Pick up one of these:
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/external/desktop/