Recover NTFS partition GPT with TestDisk, gdisk, EasyRecovery

Question

I have broken my hdd file struture. I will not go into details how that happened.

I had several NTFS partitions which have some data I need, and it was in GPT.

I tried several applications for recovering the partitions, used TestDisk and recovered some partitions, but after recovery in diskmgmt it says RAW format:

So I cannot open it and see my files there. The thing is that i used EasyRecovery to look if these partitions are correct (it sees the files) and it sees the files there when using "Explore volume" button:

I can choose what to do (explore volume goes inside the partition without searching for files, looks like it understands the filesystem and knows what it is and knows how to read it)

And it shows the files!!!

I tried to save them and they are completely valid.

From this I assume that it should be possible to just change some information about the partition/volume so windows and everything else can normally read those.

I also used gdisk, where i created new GPT and just recreated partitions with the same start sector/last sector as it is now, but it's the same as it was before, nothing has changed - it is RAW in diskmgmt.

So the question is what should i do?

Another thing i noticed is that in EasyRecovery when looking on my normal disk it shows

Note (NTFS/HPFS/exFAT), but for my corrupt disk it shows Linux_Data which seems wrong for me.

Actually the data on the disk is not so important for me and i can just reformat the hdd and forget about this issue, but i have interest in this, to find out why it's happening like that and what is possible to do.

Unfortunately EaseRecovery doesn't have recover partition option.

Maybe you know some similar Windows tools (which were done for windows) where i can just recreate partitions manually giving information about it? Cause i really don't understand how it's possible for EasyRecovery to simply read whole disk without any problem, but it's unpossible just to update information in GPT about the partitions type etc, so it's correct.

Answer 1

TestDisk, which you've mentioned, should allow you to recover partition tables. I don't think it can manually create one though.

Answer 2

1. While performing a similar recovery I found that Ontrack's EasyRecovery would correctly display the root directory folders and files, but would only display a small number of other files within those subfolders. The "it shows the files" screenshot of EasyRecovery above shows the same situation. Using GetDataBack Simple V1.00 I was able to display and recover 201,431 files in 32,928 directories from the same damaged partition. The freeware version of MiniTool's Partition Wizard was also able to view all those files before the partition was repaired.

2. Once I had a good backup of all the files on the damaged partition, I was able to repair the damaged partition using the freeware Partition Wizard Home Edition 8.1.1. The damaged partition was formatted NTSF on a GPT partitioned disk. Using Windows 7, I ran Partition Wizard, chose the Partition Wizard, selected the damaged NTFS partition (the one that shows as unformatted and RAW in diskmgmt), then chose the Check File System operation. That operation runs CHKDSK on the unformatted RAW partition with the options of Check only (Do not fix detected errors) or Check & fix detected errors.

In my case the Check & fix operation repaired the partition to the point where I then received "Location is not available: ...\ is not accessible. Access is denied." when I tried to display the files using the Windows 7 file explorer after a reboot. This was overcome following the procedure at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/810881/. After taking ownership and resetting the permissions of all the folders and files, I could then display and use the files in Windows 7.