Completely Messed Up External Hard Drive :(

[JustAGuy]

I have a 2.5tb hard drive that was all formatted to Fat32.
I have about 1.5tb of files on it.
Long story short, I used Paragon Hard Disk Manager Pro 12 to change it from primary to logical.
It completed successively but then it messed up my entire hard drive.
I have not used windows check disk but I have used many recovery software.
None have been successful but Test Disk has been able to recover some of the files, I am running a full scan to hope that it will pick up the rest.
Is there any other methods anyone can suggest?

http://imageshack.us/f/232/10395664.png/
Currently the hard drive says 690GB free of 1.87tb. (There is now a 2nd un formatted partition that I made before I realized this mess.)

Thanks.

[JustAGuy]

Well since no one wanted to help me, I'll post my findings.
Right now the partition is 1.78TB
I ran CHKDSK but it hangs after 10,000 files are made because that is the max .chk files go up to apparently.
I can tell the CHKDSK is done when explorer.exe isn't using above 100k memory and 90% of the CPU.
So after that is gone, I end the task, re started CHKDSK and is now giving me an error of not enough space.
Resizing the partition does not work due to cross-linked files and I must complete the CHKDSK first.
So I am currently moving 290gbs of CHK files onto another drive and I am going to re run it again and hope there will be enough space this time.
After I get all my CHK files, I am going to run CHK recover software to re piece all of the files together.
Whether this will work or not, I do not know but I will let you know.
This is going to take some time though.


R-Studio has been successful at recovering some of my files, however its a lot to look through what it found.
Stellar Phoenix Recovery doesn't even work and gives me an error at about 90% through scanning the drive at the start.

Right now I am sitting at 40,000 files at 839gb.
But according to windows the drive has 1.20tb of used space.
I am thinking CHKDSK will recover the rest of the files once I gain enough space.

This is a big project, but I plan to recover most of my hard drive.
R-Studio makes most of this possible thankfully as well. Trying to figure out which way would be better.

[Keatah]

Did you "sector-by-sector" image the drive? Don't work with your original/only copy.

[Keatah]

R-Studio is a good choice. I've also used GetDataBack and have had nice results in some cases. But please work with a clone of your drive. One little mistake, known or unknown will doom everything!

[JustAGuy]

GetDataBack doesn't seem to work for me, it may not be compatible with 4k sector drives. (2.5 or 3tb drives)
There is no way I can work with a clone of my drive because I do not have enough space to make a clone of it.
I only have 1 2.5tb drive, which is the one I am working with. About 1.3tb are used on it, and I have no where to clone that to unfortunately.
I have been being safe though and have had no problems yet.
Thanks for commenting.
TestDisk seemed like the best solution at first. It showed my whole hard drive like how it use to be. But after recovering any file, it is corrupted.
R-Studio has been to recover files perfectly without any corruption to them so this is nice.
I wish Stellar worked, I am going to try it again once I get all this CHK disk sorted out.

[JustAGuy]

This is what I have to work with
http://imageshack.us/f/545/capturexcu.png/

Not sure if my last post showed up but.
Thanks for your input.
However there is no way for me to clone my drive.
I tried GetDataBack but it didn't seem to work for me. It may not support 4k sector drives.

[JustAGuy]

I wonder if I recover these
http://imageshack.us/f/40/74235402.png/
Then run chkdsk, then run a chkdsk program that will piece them back together. If that will work? O.o
I'm trying it right now and will report back.
If this works then it will be a big relief.

[Vulcan]

Although it is now too late for you, for the benefit of other readers who may read the thread later, I'll add a few comments, all IMHO:

There is no way I can work with a clone of my drive because I do not have enough space to make a clone of it.

I politely disagree. You could have cloned your drive first (as Keatah suggested), but you'd have to buy an equivalent drive to hold the clone image, if you don't already have one. Therefore what you appear to mean, is that your data is not worth the cost of buying at least one similar drive, which would be needed in order to minimise the risks during your DIY recovery attempts, by making a raw copy of the original state of the drive before starting those DIY attempts. Of course it's your decision how important your data is, and therefore whether you prefer to take risks than to spend money reducing those risks, but the option of cloning the drive before attempting DIY recovery did exist. (Having said that, and although it does not apply in your case, there are even cases where attempting to clone the drive is not recommended - it all depends on the situation...)

I have been being safe though

I politely disagree. You have not been "safe" due to the lack of making a clone of your drive, before making changes to the data on it. You say that you have been running chkdsk and creating chk files. That means that chkdsk has been changing the filesystem, which is a big "no no" for safe data recovery, because you cannot undo those changes later in order to try different approaches. As I have explained on the forum before, chkdsk is not designed to recover files.

I wish you good luck, but for anyone else reading this who is in a similar situation: running chkdsk is not "safe" for the data and can reduce the success of subsequent recovery attempts using different approaches. DIY recovery attempts have risks.

[JustAGuy]

You could have definitely narrowed that down into 2 or 3 sentences instead of the unnecessary paragraphs.

Each chkdsk has not disabled or crippled me to recover any files in R-Studio. I have already verified this.

[Vulcan]

You could have definitely narrowed that down into 2 or 3 sentences instead of the unnecessary paragraphs.

That's your opinion, but it's irrelevant to the technical points. In any case, as I explained, my points are for future readers, who may not understand just "2 or 3 sentences".

Each chkdsk has not disabled or crippled me to recover any files in R-Studio. I have already verified this.

Also irrelevant IMHO (and I haven't stated that the effects would be seen in all cases). For those who, like me, have been involved in filesystem coding and corruption analysis, the risks of the changes made by chkdsk (and fsck on *nix) exist as I stated. If you don't believe me, go ask some DR professionals if they would irreversibly change the filesystem metadata in unpredictable ways on an original disk (as chkdsk does), without making a clone first.

I guessed you wouldn't like what I said, but that doesn't change the facts about the risks which I mentioned, which is why I'm making these points for future readers.

[quasimodo]

I'm making these points for future readers.

Well said and agreed