How to recover a partition
- Thread starter Docfxit
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FreeBooter
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britechguy
Well-known member
You are almost certain to never be able to boot from that drive again. This sort of failure is most often unrecoverable as far as "restoring the drive to bootability."
And, depending on what's wrong with it, hitting it with TestDisk (which I really like, by the way, but I prefer to use it on a cloned copy of the wonky drive) could easily push it over the edge to complete failure.
If I were you, I'd clone that drive to a known good drive and do any and all attempted recovery steps on the cloned copy.
And, depending on what's wrong with it, hitting it with TestDisk (which I really like, by the way, but I prefer to use it on a cloned copy of the wonky drive) could easily push it over the edge to complete failure.
If I were you, I'd clone that drive to a known good drive and do any and all attempted recovery steps on the cloned copy.
How were you able to determine that testdisk cause a drive to fail?
Is there a particular step within the software that is known to cause drive failure?
If Lavesoft fails to recover the partition can it still make a clone?
Why doesn't the clone fail with an error message or code?
britechguy
Well-known member
Anything, anything at all, that hits a drive as intensely as something like TeskDisk does can push a failing drive to failure. Trying to defrag it could. Anything that is insanely I/O intensive could. It's not "a step" but the fact that if you have a HDD that's on the verge of physical failure, pushing it can be "the last straw." Even the cloning process could, potentially, kill it, but at least if it does you have whatever could be duplicated on to a known stable drive actually on that drive. Running something like TestDisk on a known good drive is not problematic.
So long as the disc can be read, it can be cloned.
It is possible for clones to fail, but they work somewhat differently than a straight copy, and if they fail they fail in a different way.
The reason you clone is to take the potential for actual physical drive failure of the dying drive out of the picture. You have the compromised copy (with whatever damage there was on the original) now on a stable drive. And that stable drive can be hit and hit and hit by all of the various types of recovery software of your choosing in order to get back what can be gotten back without fear of actual drive failure.
If the contents of this drive are precious I would not even do that. It would be straight off to a data recovery lab. I've seen plenty of drives that have been made unrecoverable by amateur recovery attempts that finally caused something like a head crash. You've already been hitting this drive, so the probability of total failure increases.
This situation points up, again, Why you MUST Routinely Take Full System Image Backups of Your Computer, as a standard part of computer ownership if you value your time, sanity, and data.
So long as the disc can be read, it can be cloned.
It is possible for clones to fail, but they work somewhat differently than a straight copy, and if they fail they fail in a different way.
The reason you clone is to take the potential for actual physical drive failure of the dying drive out of the picture. You have the compromised copy (with whatever damage there was on the original) now on a stable drive. And that stable drive can be hit and hit and hit by all of the various types of recovery software of your choosing in order to get back what can be gotten back without fear of actual drive failure.
If the contents of this drive are precious I would not even do that. It would be straight off to a data recovery lab. I've seen plenty of drives that have been made unrecoverable by amateur recovery attempts that finally caused something like a head crash. You've already been hitting this drive, so the probability of total failure increases.
This situation points up, again, Why you MUST Routinely Take Full System Image Backups of Your Computer, as a standard part of computer ownership if you value your time, sanity, and data.
I certainly appreciate all the information and experience you are all sharing.
For this particular install:
1. This is on a Tablet. I guess I could clone this to an external drive. I don't have an SSD that I could swap out with the internal SSD. I don't know if they make a USB external enclosure to hold an internal SSD for this Thinkpad X1 Extreme Tablet Gen 3.
2. I don't believe this SSD is bad. I have run the Lenovo diagnostics on all hardware devices and everything passed. With that in mind I have no idea what might have caused this problem. One day I turned it on and the entire screen was black.
3. I do have a software backup. I haven't tried it yet because I like to learn how to repair situations like this. Most people that come to me for help don't have a backup so I like to learn new ways to recover problems. Once I get to the point of not wanting to spend any more time on this, I will try to restore the backup I have. I hope it will work.
4. I tried following the instructions to run TestDisk. I can't get it to boot.
I downloaded:
testdisk-7.2-WIP.dos.zip
testdisk.pdf
TestDiskToUSBImageWriter.exe Which will only write .raw files to a USB
Fedora-Workstation-Live-x86_64-35-1.2.iso The PDF instructions say to download Fedora. I couldn't find a .raw file.
Install_rawrite-1.0.9.0.zip. This was also recommended in the instructions. It also wouldn't install an .iso file to a USB.
I ended up using USB rufus-3.18.exe to install Fedora.iso to a USB.
When I try to boot to the USB I get these options:
Start Fedora-Workstation-Line 35
Test this media & start Fedora Workstation-Live 35
Troubleshooting -->
All three options give me the same results:
Failed to mount block device of live image
Refusing to continue
A bunch of details
System Halted
I must have done something wrong. Any suggestions?
Thanks,
For this particular install:
1. This is on a Tablet. I guess I could clone this to an external drive. I don't have an SSD that I could swap out with the internal SSD. I don't know if they make a USB external enclosure to hold an internal SSD for this Thinkpad X1 Extreme Tablet Gen 3.
2. I don't believe this SSD is bad. I have run the Lenovo diagnostics on all hardware devices and everything passed. With that in mind I have no idea what might have caused this problem. One day I turned it on and the entire screen was black.
3. I do have a software backup. I haven't tried it yet because I like to learn how to repair situations like this. Most people that come to me for help don't have a backup so I like to learn new ways to recover problems. Once I get to the point of not wanting to spend any more time on this, I will try to restore the backup I have. I hope it will work.
4. I tried following the instructions to run TestDisk. I can't get it to boot.
I downloaded:
testdisk-7.2-WIP.dos.zip
testdisk.pdf
TestDiskToUSBImageWriter.exe Which will only write .raw files to a USB
Fedora-Workstation-Live-x86_64-35-1.2.iso The PDF instructions say to download Fedora. I couldn't find a .raw file.
Install_rawrite-1.0.9.0.zip. This was also recommended in the instructions. It also wouldn't install an .iso file to a USB.
I ended up using USB rufus-3.18.exe to install Fedora.iso to a USB.
When I try to boot to the USB I get these options:
Start Fedora-Workstation-Line 35
Test this media & start Fedora Workstation-Live 35
Troubleshooting -->
All three options give me the same results:
Failed to mount block device of live image
Refusing to continue
A bunch of details
System Halted
I must have done something wrong. Any suggestions?
Thanks,
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