Data Drive Partition - Inaccessible after installing OS

Modify_inc · Apr 9, 2014

I thought I was doing good by keeping my data on a second partition of my OS drive. That way if my OS crashed my data would be still in tack on the second volume. I mean as long as the hdd didn’t crash that is.

I installed a new SSD and begin to install Windows on it. I don’t remember exactly when, but it was during the setup of Windows. It said one of my drives needed to be checked for consistency or something. I noticed though, it was referring to my data drive. I tried to press X to stop it, so I wouldn’t have to wait on it, and I could deal with it later, but I missed it.
I noticed during the check, it was finding all kinds of problems, and a lot of recovering this and that. After Windows 7 was installed on the SSD, I noticed my data drive’s second partition showing as a local drive under My Computer. Clicking on it gave me the dreaded message, “Drive needs to be formatted”. The first partition of the data drive (that has my original Windows 7 on it) is fine and still accessible. It is just the second partition, which had all my data, is now inaccessible.

Computer Management shows it as a RAW Healthy Primary Partition.
Also I have scanned the hdd for errors, and it has none, so it's not bad blocks or that the drive is dying on me all of the sudden.

What would someone recommend I use to try and recover the data from this drive?

I am trying to understand why Windows felt it needed to scan my data drive during the installation of Windows. It was not even using or needing access to it to install Windows. Is this by design when Windows is installing, to check all HDDs installed? Usually when a hdd fails to boot or start Windows, it will then ask to perform a check on the hdd during the next boot, but that is for the OS drive, not a data drive, correct?

Thanks
Mike

mouse24 · Apr 9, 2014

Thats ... uh.. odd. I'm not really sure where to start on this one. (if anyone has anything they'd like to pipe in, I'd appreciate it)

My first thought would be to see if you can see your files with a linux live CD.

fzabkar · Apr 12, 2014

Is the data drive a 3TB or larger drive? If so, then it could be that in the process of installing a new OS, the default SATA driver may have had a 32-bit LBA limitation, in which case any partition beyond 2TiB may have appeared to be corrupt. Does this sound plausible?

Paperdoc · Apr 13, 2014

Somehow the install process managed to write an error or two to the Partition Table of the HDD that affects the second "drive's" entry. Either that, or the error is in that Partition's Directory system. Anyway, Windows now cannot understand the data on the drive for the structure of that second Partition. This does NOT mean that the HDD actually has any Bad Sectors, so it will NOT be detected in a HDD testing diagnostic. It also VERY likely does NOT mean there is any actual damage to the data on that Partition. However, Windows can't figure out the error and hence cannot read the Partition's contents.

This is a common type of problem - the problem of a RAW File System. You can get third-party utilities on the web that can work their way through that Partition and recover the data from it. Some you pay for, some are free. Almost all avoid writing anything to the troubled HDD, to make sure the data are not corrupted. Instead, they require that you have a spare HDD connected with enough capacity to accept all the data the utility can recover. Once it is safe on that spare HDD you can wipe the old HDD clean and re-Partition and Format it, then copy all the recovered data from the spare back to the cleaned-up original. After that you do not need the spare unit any more.

Look for ways to fix a RAW File System. The process takes time and patience, but it works. Good luck!

Y0GI · Apr 13, 2014

Here is one solution: http://www.rawfilesystem.com/download.html

The trial version will show you the files to be recovered but in order to get the files you must purchase the full version of the program.

Yogi

jayvl · Oct 21, 2014

Very interesting case. I suppose this is why some guides recommend disconnecting all other drives when installing a new OS/Windows--I wonder if the HDD partitions would have been accessible if you had done that...maybe it can't be avoided. The why is just as interesting as the how.

Anyway, maybe it is possible to 'tell' windows that your RAW data partition is indeed NTFS. Though I don't know enough about partition tables and filesystems to be sure that is possible. In other words all the 1's and 0's are still in the same place, it just needs 'header info' to make sense of them. I suppose that is what the recovery tools will do.

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Data Drive Partition - Inaccessible after installing OS

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