[SOLVED] Formatted a usb drive to ntfs in parted magic and now unallocated in windows

[ell]

I have a large 1tb backup img on it and want to extract the data using a windows machine but it now shows as online unallocated even though I formatted it to ntfs in parted magic. Is there a fix? The image shows fine in parted magic

 

[GreyWolf]

Ok first I seriously hope you didn't format the key to ntfs to get access to the data and you had formatted the unit before having the data placed onto it.

I'd recheck with parted magic if you can mount it or use a boot iso of redo backup which will also show you partitions and backups.

Under Disk Management can you see the device? if so, any drive letter if not try right clicking the partition and change drive letter to assign one.

On the same screen you'll see if there is any data on the key at the same time if it's blank then I recommend using software recovery depending on the needs "testdisk" may resolve your issue however you'll require a additional terabyte to restore the data.

Also it would help to know the version of Windows your using machine type and have you tried a different port.

Give those a shot else wise depending if it is a HDD in a caddie you might get better results hooking it up directly to a computer (Many times I swore like an Irishman because of the actual caddie device)

Shawn W. Dion
aka GreyWolf

 

[ell]

Ok first I seriously hope you didn't format the key to ntfs to get access to the data and you had formatted the unit before having the data placed onto it.

I'd recheck with parted magic if you can mount it or use a boot iso of redo backup which will also show you partitions and backups.

Under Disk Management can you see the device? if so, any drive letter if not try right clicking the partition and change drive letter to assign one.

On the same screen you'll see if there is any data on the key at the same time if it's blank then I recommend using software recovery depending on the needs "testdisk" may resolve your issue however you'll require a additional terabyte to restore the data.

Also it would help to know the version of Windows your using machine type and have you tried a different port.

Give those a shot else wise depending if it is a HDD in a caddie you might get better results hooking it up directly to a computer (Many times I swore like an Irishman because of the actual caddie device)

Shawn W. Dion
aka GreyWolf

So annoyed, its a win 10, I'm running easeus partition recovery on it now. The img is easily seen in linux. There's no option in windows to give it a letter, just change it to gpt or dynamic, which I would think would just format it. I am not using usb, I have the drive connected directly by sata in windows, but it was connected by usb when I used the live parted magic boot usb to format to ntfs and create the img to it.

 

[GreyWolf]

You see it in Linux.. that's great why not copy the file to a windows partition onto another drive? I'm sure that will work until you can re-setup the hard drive using either windows directly or even once you have a copy of your image (and you know it's working) i'd run HDD Low Level Format Tool from hddguru onto the drive then create the new partitions.

That's what I would do, yes it's a PITA but at this point the key is the data and before you ending up by accident or charming Windows 10 wanting to format the disk because it can't see it I would definitely go to that route.

Shawn W. Dion
aka GreyWolf

Edit : @Computer Bloke seems great minds think alike xD

 

[ell]

You see it in Linux.. that's great why not copy the file to a windows partition onto another drive? I'm sure that will work until you can re-setup the hard drive using either windows directly or even once you have a copy of your image (and you know it's working) i'd run HDD Low Level Format Tool from hddguru onto the drive then create the new partitions.

That's what I would do, yes it's a PITA but at this point the key is the data and before you ending up by accident or charming Windows 10 wanting to format the disk because it can't see it I would definitely go to that route.

Shawn W. Dion
aka GreyWolf

Edit : @Computer Bloke seems great minds think alike xD

Yes I started to copy the whole 1tb image to another drive, but quit cuz it would be another 2 hrs, posted here hoping maybe there was a fix. Now I'm doing data recovery on a data recovery image!

 

[GreyWolf]

Unfortunately my time machine in the shop and believe me I feel your pain on this one last week my charming cat showed me that my desk shelf wasn't screwed on properly she made 4 hard drives crash nicely i was able to recover the data however passing 2 days in data recovery more wasn't my cup of tea. Wishing you all the best in your data recovery.

Shawn W. Dion
aka GreyWolf

 

[nerd2u]

I really hope this is your personal data and not a customers sounds like you truely have no business doing data recovery of any kind.

Sent from my SM-G870W using Tapatalk

 

[nerd2u]

Also ntfs drives and usb don't mix well my guess is you didn't safely dismount the usb and just pulled it out. Ntfs drives don't like being suddenly unplugged.

Sent from my SM-G870W using Tapatalk

 

[ell]

I really hope this is your personal data and not a customers sounds like you truely have no business doing data recovery of any kind.

Sent from my SM-G870W using Tapatalk

This board is for techs to exchange information not to just criticize, you shouldn't comment if you have nothing helpful to contribute. Ofcourse my clients data was not jeopardized, I'm talking about the image I made, I also know well enough not to yank drives out when powered on. I have done many successful data recoveries over the years, not my first rodeo but I don't pretend to have all the answers or I wouldn't be here.

 

[ell]

Unfortunately my time machine in the shop and believe me I feel your pain on this one last week my charming cat showed me that my desk shelf wasn't screwed on properly she made 4 hard drives crash nicely i was able to recover the data however passing 2 days in data recovery more wasn't my cup of tea. Wishing you all the best in your data recovery.

Shawn W. Dion
aka GreyWolf

Cats and grandkids, both are hard on hard drives! My granddaughter wanted to watch me work with her coloring book on my bench, one of my spare drives became a door stop that day! I'm just going to have to make another image I guess but first reformat it in windows instead of gparted. I like to make images with ddrescue then use r-studio for recovery. His disk it fine, he just did a recovery and wiped it by mistake. I'm partenered with a data recovery specialist if they are willing to pay for critical data, most don't want to or the data isn't that important to them, I always give them the option up front.

 

[nerd2u]

Sorry but based on the questions and answers it sounds like this is a I'm winging it as I go attempt at data recovery.

At the end of the day it's not my business nor do I have to suffer the consequences of a poorly handled data recovery scenario.

With that being said if you have physical access to the disk make a block my block copy and recover that way you don't need to give the disk a logical Partition or drive letter to recover data.

If your drive contains a recovery image I'm assuming it's a DD image or a raw image format, think of it as just another file. Spin up the drive make a block by block image then recover the data.

This is also why I prefer to copy drive to drive and not drive to image.

Sent from my SM-G870W using Tapatalk

 

[nerd2u]

This board is for techs to exchange information not to just criticize, you shouldn't comment if you have nothing helpful to contribute. Ofcourse my clients data was not jeopardized, I'm talking about the image I made, I also know well enough not to yank drives out when powered on. I have done many successful data recoveries over the years, not my first rodeo but I don't pretend to have all the answers or I wouldn't be here.

I don't get it if this is just an image of a working drive why waste all your time and resources messing with it? Is there some data on this image you need?

If it's not the only copy of the data and it's just a backup of a working machine check the drive for errors format it and make a new image.

I'm simply trying to understand the whole picture. If I had a drive which contained an image of my hard drive and that drive went bad I would just take a new image of my hard drive. I would only worry about getting access to that image if it contained data which I no longer had access to.

Sent from my SM-G870W using Tapatalk

 

[ell]

Sorry but based on the questions and answers it sounds like this is a I'm winging it as I go attempt at data recovery.

At the end of the day it's not my business nor do I have to suffer the consequences of a poorly handled data recovery scenario.

With that being said if you have physical access to the disk make a block my block copy and recover that way you don't need to give the disk a logical Partition or drive letter to recover data.

If your drive contains a recovery image I'm assuming it's a DD image or a raw image format, think of it as just another file. Spin up the drive make a block by block image then recover the data.

This is also why I prefer to copy drive to drive and not drive to image.

Sent from my SM-G870W using Tapatalk

I'm thinking what happened is when I used gparted to format the drive to ntfs via my my sata/usb adapter, possibly corrupted the partition for windows. Generally I have the target drive already formatted prior to using. Just odd I didn't get any error creating the image to it with ddrescue. I usually like to pull the source drives and connect them via sata to my bench pc instead of usb. I've already completed the recovery successfully and its been picked up so no big deal, just another lesson learned, maybe.

 

[ell]

I don't get it if this is just an image of a working drive why waste all your time and resources messing with it? Is there some data on this image you need?

If it's not the only copy of the data and it's just a backup of a working machine check the drive for errors format it and make a new image.

I'm simply trying to understand the whole picture. If I had a drive which contained an image of my hard drive and that drive went bad I would just take a new image of my hard drive. I would only worry about getting access to that image if it contained data which I no longer had access to.

Sent from my SM-G870W using Tapatalk

I was just trying to find out why the dang drive would only let me access the image in linux when the drive is physically fine and ntfs. It took forever to image and I didn't really want to make a new one again. Plus I wanted to use the image in windows with r-studio. The drive was in one of those not easily accessible so I just used usb.

 

[Sky-Knight]

Linux separates partitions from filesystems, if I had to venture a guess, the partition type in linux wasn't set properly and while it was formatted NTFS, the partition header doesn't reflect this so Windows won't mount it.

 

[ell]

Linux separates partitions from filesystems, if I had to venture a guess, the partition type in linux wasn't set properly and while it was formatted NTFS, the partition header doesn't reflect this so Windows won't mount it.

Sounds right, formatting to ntfs in linux is not the same as formatting ntfs in windows, that would explain it.

 

[Sky-Knight]

@ell if you still have the errant disk, examine the drive in Linux, and look for the Partition Type or ID. It needs to be 7 for Windows to read it, If you made it on Linux it's probably 83, that's for the EXT series of filesystems.

You can see a list here: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/60722/what-is-partition-system-id

Post actually explains how to view them too. I don't think you can change the partition ID without data loss...

 

[ell]

OMG, I think I found the culprit. I was using the same usb/sata adapter on another job and it stopped working suddenly, I cracked the cover off the sata connector and found one of the wires broke off the solder on the card, always something dumb. I guess that would be enough to corrupt the drive.Thanks everyone for your input.

 

[Sky-Knight]

HA yep that'll do it!

 

[ell]

HA yep that'll do it!