OK, so this is basically worst case scenario: I was resizing and moving a large partition (Of course, I don't have a backup. please don't remind me) and during the actual partition copy my laptop locked up (HDD led stopped, no response to any stimulus) and had to be rebooted.
The operation in progress was moving an NTFS partition with a size of about 350GB to the LEFT by a few hundred GB. It was about 95GB in.
Here's a picture (approximate) of the layout of the disk before and after the move. The current layout looks like the "after", but the copy did not complete successfully. Gparted correctly reports that the partition is all fscked up, and I know better than to try to mount it.
So, assuming gparted isn't bat-**** insane, and based on both assumption and the progress of the operation, that gparted first moves the partition leftward to its desired location and then expands it rightward until it fills the requested space. Since the operation was interrupted early on in the MOVING process, I think it's a fair assumption that the entire partition still exists more or less unscathed at its original location (not enough data had been copied to overwrite the beginning of the partition).
I'm currently using testdisk (recommended in another thread) to see if I can locate the correct beginning of the partition, but I suspect it is not going to work (it's most of the way through and has not found it yet). I have not yet tried gparted's "Attempt Data Rescue" mode yet.
Is there a utility I can use to search for the original, correct beginning of the partition and to update the partition table entries correspondingly?
I also can't boot windows. It's kind of on the partition. Any alternatives to using chkdsk?
Bookmarks