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I have a 2TB HDD with a large amount of data on it. While all the important bits are backed up, I would prefer not to have to re-download/recreate most of it. It contains 1 large NTFS partition with an MBR boot record.

I wished to create another partition to the left of the one partition that existed, hence I unmounted and then shifted the 1.2TB of data to the right by 200GB.

After this completed, I, perhaps too hastily, attempted to mount it again. This went fine. However, upon reboot I discovered this:

GParted unknown partition.

Attempts to fix this using Minitools partition wizard (bootable USB) allowed me to "recover" the partition, but still in its original place (not shifted 200GB to the right). Most of the data seemed corrupted and was not able to be accessed.

I ran a testdisk deep scan, which found no recoverable partitions.

Any help in remedying this situation would be greatly appreciated.

fixer1234
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IllustriousMagenta
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  • After moving it & re-mounting, were you able to successfully read & write data, more than a disk cache could hold (a few gigs)? Testdisk not finding anything is disappointing, maybe searching for the ntfs "header" might work (if that can be done) to at least mount & copy the data – Xen2050 Nov 08 '18 at 05:05
  • I am unable to mount it anymore; as GPARTED shows it is unrecognised. However, my bootable partition wizard seems to be able to read some of the directories (not all). Trying a recovery scan here. I would think a solution might be to somehow tell the partition table that it exists 200G to the right (it was exactly 200G so that's easy) but without moving it to the right?

    Navigating through the drive in the partition wizard seems to work well; although I cannot test if files actually open or not. Running a scan detecting some ext4 partitions. See photo here

     – IllustriousMagenta Nov 08 '18 at 06:17
  • Currently, there are no partitions at all. It might relevant what the warning triangle is about. When re-creating the missing partition, make extra sure not to accidentally create a filesystem. I’d recommend low-level tools like gdisk or fdisk for this task. – Daniel B Nov 08 '18 at 06:47
  • Gdisk appears to want to create two ext4 partitions. I'll try a recover MBR using gdisk or fdisk though. – IllustriousMagenta Nov 08 '18 at 06:48
  • My partition recovery software detected the partition and has fixed it. Any suggestions to ensure that my files will still work. – IllustriousMagenta Nov 08 '18 at 06:58
  • losetup can accept an --offset <bytes> parameter, that might help for mounting if you know exactly where the filesystem begins if the partition still won't line up quite right ( there's a --sizelimit too, but not sure if a too big device matters, too small might matter). I wouldn't run any fsck's, and just mount ro to check if things are readable first – Xen2050 Nov 08 '18 at 17:15
  • I've just copied the entire drive over onto some external drives as a test, and everything seems to have gone perfectly well. – IllustriousMagenta Nov 09 '18 at 12:28

1 Answers1

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Using Minitools Partition Wizard Boot able iso and running the recover partitions function I was able to recover the shifted partition. All my files seem fine.

IllustriousMagenta
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