1 Topic by popbop

  • popbop
  • New member
  • Offline
  • Registered: 2016-09-05
  • Posts: 1

Topic: restore deleted Win10 partitions. Can't boot (32-bit UEFI laptop)

I'm an old-school Windows guy with a new Win10 netbook. It only has 32MB onboard eMMC storage, a good portion of which was occupied by the recovery partition. So, I went about deleting the recovery partition to free up more storage space. BUT, in the process I noticed these two smaller partitions that I thought I'd delete as well. Not knowing the new EFI scheme used by Win10, I of course deleted my boot partition and Windows partition.

Of course, non of the Windows recovery tools worked -- wouldn't even boot in 32-bit UEFI mode. The only things I could get to boot were: 1. TestDisk (which did not identify the Windows partitions correctly) and 2. GParted. TestDisk messed with the partition tables, but not other data was overwritten or "recovered."

I want to use Gparted to restore the Windows partitions as they were. However, I'm not sure how to use the live cd (booted from USB) to restore the partitions. In THEORY, I should be able to reset all the partitions and then boot back into Windows 10.

Please give me some idea where to start on this. Here's a screenshot of the WIndows partitions before I deleted the 2 small ones

http://i65.tinypic.com/sdh8vk.jpg

2 Reply by gedakc

  • gedakc
  • Developer
  • Offline
  • Registered: 2007-11-30
  • Posts: 4,592

Re: restore deleted Win10 partitions. Can't boot (32-bit UEFI laptop)

GParted can attempt data recovery, but does not restore partition tables.  See GParted Manual - Attempting Data Rescue.

GParted uses an older command line tool called gpart (naming coincidence) to scan the disk surface.  It was written to work with MSDOS partition tables and BIOS only, not GPT with EFI.  If gpart finds partitions that it recognizes, then GParted will try to mount the partition.  At that point it is up to you to copy data from the mounted partition to another location.

If you wish to recover partition tables then testdisk is likely your best option.  However from your post it would seem that this did not work for you.

As a last resort you might consider using photorec to scan the disk surface looking for files that it recognizes.  This is a labour intensive process and does not maintain the original file names.