1 Topic by rubjim91

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Topic: System rebooted while resizing and moving NTFS partition.

I was about to install a new linux distro but before that I decided to free some space from my hard drive. I opened GParted from the live dvd and freed up some space to the left of my data NTFS partition, next I wanted to re-size and move that partition to the left, so, I left it running. Next thing I know the system went for a reboot and the dvd tray was open. This happened before the re-sizing/moving job finished.
Now I can mount the partition but most of the data is gone. When I open GParted, the partition shows up with an alert. I tried the Check option but it just runs for a really long time consuming >90% of my CPU, so now I don't know what to do, and there are some important data on that partition.

Any help would be appreciated.

2 Reply by gedakc

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Re: System rebooted while resizing and moving NTFS partition.

When a resize or move operation fails it is best to make a backup image copy of the drive before attempting recovery.  That way if the recovery attempt makes things worse then you can restore the backup image and try again.

Because a partition check was initiated after the failure, it is no longer as easy to determine if the operation failed in the resize or move stage.

You might investigate photorec, which scans the surface of the disk for recognizable file types, to attempt to recover some of your files.

3 Reply by rubjim91

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Re: System rebooted while resizing and moving NTFS partition.

The resizing stage was completed, I'm sure that the system rebooted during the moving stage. Stopping the partition check could have made things worse?

When I mount the partition I can see all of my folders but the content of most of them are gone. I recovered some missing files of only one folder using testdisk but there are still a lot of GBs (>100) of information that I'd like to recover.

Thanks for the tip, I'll make the backup image before trying anything else. I'll try photorec, but I want to know if there's a way to fix the partition, or data recovery and then re-format is my only hope? I will also try data rescue from a live GParted CD.

4 Reply by gedakc

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Re: System rebooted while resizing and moving NTFS partition.

If GParted was in the moving stage, then the partition check would make things worse.  This is because the partition would be broken into two distinct parts, and the check would then be running on only a portion of the data.

If the check had not been run, then recovering the data would have been an exercise of determining where the move of data stopped.  Once the location was determined, the next step would be to finish off moving the remaining data, and then making sure the partition boundaries matched the file system size.  In this situation all data could be recovered.

5 Reply by rubjim91

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Re: System rebooted while resizing and moving NTFS partition.

I managed to recover many more files with Photorec, thanks for the quick reply!

Still I have two more questions:
- Does photorec normally recover files with a completely different name (something like an auto-generated code: f39503430.jpeg)? Not that I'm complaining, certainly having my files back but with different names is better than not having them.
- My next question: Is there a way to fix the partition? I'm asking since you said that is just a thing of finding where the moving stopped and continue from there, I understand this but how or with what tool can I try to do this?

When the accident happened I wasn't sure exactly just how many files were missing, I just knew there were a lot. That's why I still don't know if everything was recovered, and, a lot of recovered files are corrupted, but something for sure is that Photorec did a whole more than Testdisk. This is why I asked the second question, so that I can be completely sure that all of my files in the partition are back.

Thanks again.

6 Reply by gedakc

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Re: System rebooted while resizing and moving NTFS partition.

'Glad to hear that you were able to recover some files using photorec.  As you discovered, photorec recovers the files, but not the file names.

In your situation, because a check has been run on the broken file system, the likelihood of determining the disk sector  where the move stopped is significantly reduced.  Further, rejoining the broken file system at this time is not guaranteed to work.  At this time, I think your best option is to recover as many files as you can using tools such as photorec.

If you are still interested, there are reports in this forum of how other users searched for the location where a move halted.  Basically it involves looking for a set of repeated sectors within the boundaries of the area in which the partition was moved.