During merging two 200-gig partitions (one full and the other one unallocated), Windows crashed.
Now the system and every hard disk utility (defrag program) shows that the drive is full of files, but no files appear when exploring the drive. It shows that 190 gigabyte of the drive is taken, but shows 0% of its files need defragment!
I scandisked the drive, and it found no errors (plus no bad sectors). But still, when I want to merge it again (in the hope that the lost files come back), the partition manager says the disk has errors and asks me to check the disk for errors (errors that are never detected).
The problem is that these files are not deleted, so I cannot undelete them. When I opt for file recovery, it searches the white space for the deleted files, but my deleted files are not in the white space.
I guess the FAT table is damaged. Is it the end for this drive? :-(
Currently I am running MiniTool Power Data Recovery to (hopefully) retrieve the FAT and thus my files. However, I wonder if it failed, is there another more professional way to retrieve them?
I mean perhaps I might somehow convert those invisible files to white space, and run a simple data recovery?
Any suggestions? :(
Programs like MiniTool Power Data Recovery can deep-scan the drive and recognize (read guess) many of the lost files (incorrectly for many files though, although still valuable).
However, that's not what I look for. My case is a strange case not seen or heard of before. In my case, the DEFRAGMENT programs succeed to show the white space and the filled space. So there must be some FAT there, that allows such programs to identify the filled space and distinguish it from the white space, right?
So why the same cannot work for data recovery?