NeoSmart Easy RE saved Windows but deleted my data partition

rde

Member
Hello!
I have just used NeoSmart Easy RE to fix a boot issue (the ...00e and ...225 ones) which worked fine.
Unfortunately, some partitions were being scrambled/deleted by EasyRE (they still existed right before when I used them from boot command prompt, also a Windows installation disk listed them as available installation partitions).
The attached image "DiskManagement" shows what it looks like now (D: should be E: but cannot yet be re-lettered).
The two unallocated spaces at the end were, if I remember correctly, a 200 GB partition for Linux, a 200 GB partition for Windows 10 preview and the rest was a data partition. The latter one is the important one. Is there any chance to get it back?

If there was at least a way to try and recover files from there?

And does anyone have an idea why these partitions got touched? The shouldn't be involved in the boot process nor the boot repair process..?

Thank you!
 

Attachments

  • DiskManagement.jpg
    DiskManagement.jpg
    152.3 KB · Views: 7
Hello!
I have just used NeoSmart Easy RE to fix a boot issue (the ...00e and ...225 ones) which worked fine.
Unfortunately, some partitions were being scrambled/deleted by EasyRE (they still existed right before when I used them from boot command prompt, also a Windows installation disk listed them as available installation partitions).
The attached image "DiskManagement" shows what it looks like now (D: should be E: but cannot yet be re-lettered).
The two unallocated spaces at the end were, if I remember correctly, a 200 GB partition for Linux, a 200 GB partition for Windows 10 preview and the rest was a data partition. The latter one is the important one. Is there any chance to get it back?

If there was at least a way to try and recover files from there?

And does anyone have an idea why these partitions got touched? The shouldn't be involved in the boot process nor the boot repair process..?

Thank you!
If someone with knowledge answers then good, but all EasyRE help is now via email as per https://neosmart.net/forums/threads...upport-requests-to-easyre-neosmart-net.12373/
 
You must have had some incorrect (but not necessarily non-working) entries in the partition table that resulted in the original problem; EasyRE's rectification of the underlying issue probably resulted in the current inability to access those partitions.

The possibilities include overlapping partition entries (a partition starts before the end of a previous one) or conflicting MBR/GPT partition records. You can recover your partition(s) by explicitly choosing which partitions to keep or how to rearrange them from the command line in EasyRE with the 'testdisk' command.
 
Thank you again for your support! I am really happy that it seems there is a chance to get this data partition back! (I backed up the first three partitions prior to repairing because I thought they might get changed - didn't even think about the ones back there at the end.)

Actually I cannot remember to have used a third party partitioning tool yet (besides Windows setup and diskpart), but this installation is some years old and I guess you're right with your assumption, Mahmoud.

Booted from your CD, tried Partition Editor and got these messages:

1.jpg
2.jpg

(Sorry for the bad Samsung Galaxy camera quality)
 
Last edited:
Then, as suggested, I started testdisk. It will probably take all night for it to finish analyzing the disk, so I decided to reboot to post here, then let it run while I sleep (it is now almost 10 pm here).

testdisk already found the partition named LX where I wanted to install Linux one day, it is still empty though. Windows disk manager doe not recognize this partition anymore.

I found an older screenshot showing my partitions. I do not remember what software this was, but I think I used it to move that small unused part to the front:

partitions1_0.png
 
testdisk ran as you can see in these last two "screenshots"3.jpg 4.jpg

I am still a bit scared to totally destroy the data, but I'll see what it found by tomorrow. :smile:

Best regards,

Ralph
 
testdisk says the media is read only. I guess it cannot repair like this.
BTW, there are currently three disks in the computer (1 x Seagate 3 TB, 2 x WD 3 GB), testdisk is only offering one diskm which is luckily the one I need.

How do I un-read-only the disk?

5.jpg
 
It shouldn't be read-only unless you're in the middle of a repair run from EasyRE or have mounted the drive for backup/restore?
 
Back
Top