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The affected SSD is removed from a laptop with 4 partitions to be used in an external enclosure, one primary partition (C:) cannot be found in Windows, but could be read in Ubuntu. After I was trying to fix it with TestDisk in Windows, now it cannot be found or read in Ubuntu as well. I don't know what I did with TestDisk but the MFT was corrupted per Chkdsk and could not be repaired.

I used active@ partition recovery demo edition and made a raw image of that partition on another HDD. The superscan on the original disk found that C: partition in a bad status with missing $MFT, $MFTMirror and other attributes but the superscan on the raw image found that C: partition in an excellent status with all the files that I can preview in binary form.

The C: drive is about 100G, Im tempted to purchase the full version of active@ partition recovery (btw, if you know a better alternative please let me know) to recover the partition from the raw image , but should I do it in place or on another HDD? And there are several things not that clear to me:

  1. Does what has happened suggest there are physical damages on my original SSD? Should I stop working on it now to prevent further loss? the other three partition, two seem pretty normal, one is called "system reserved". I don't know if MBR should be on this partition or the corrupted C:? I did managed to write booting information on both this partition and the C: with TestDisk that completely corrupted it. I'm still confused where should the MBR be. If it's on C: can the active@ partition recovery recover it?

  2. The active@partition recovery found loads of volumes (can post a screenshot later), except for the good C: that I can recognize and plan to recover, I don't know what to do with the rests. Some are with FAT boot sector which I wonder why, and named "EFIxxxx" , and loads are simply with bad sectors.

Journeyman Geek
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Shawn Ma
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  • you should first check the SSD's S.M.A.R.T. data. If there is any error, you should avoid write onto the disk. – Wang May 07 '17 at 19:27
  • “if you know a better alternative please let me know” If by “better” you mean free software, I happen to have developed one. It's called RecuperaBit: https://askubuntu.com/a/776317/271 – Andrea Lazzarotto May 07 '17 at 22:02

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Your affected SSD is doomed!

Evacuate everything that has value on it as soon as possible! Your information suggests that its problem is deteriorating, so hurry.

You may perhaps take the SSD to an authorized service center and, if you are lucky, get it repaired, or if it has warranty, replaced. (Just don't give them too much info; tell them it stopped working without you doing anything out of ordinary with it. I suppose that's the truth, right?)

About your many questions...

You have asked a lot of sporadic questions that stem from your lack of familiarity with the subject. (There is no shame in it; not everyone is a rocket scientist.) They make sense to me, and I can tell you that they are irrelevant at this stage.

Whether you decide to recover your C: volume (by perhaps paying for a copy of Active@ Partition) is totally up to you. The question you have to answer is: Is there anything of value on it?

  • Thank you. Exactly because there are some valuable things on C: , I need to recover it. Since the other partitions are readable I already made backups of them, I also made backup of my User folder in C: before it completely died. By "evacuate", what do you mean? I guess I need to make a sector-by-sector image of C:. and work from there? The folder structure and file lists can be seen from that Demo software but I can't copy them out without the actual recovery. – Shawn Ma May 06 '17 at 13:19