Originally posted by aldra
If testdisk or other file recovery tools are unable to recover data, I don't think you have much chance of rebuilding the partition. All they do is scan the harddrive looking for headers for known filetypes then grab the subsequent data and put them in a file - if they're 'recovering' hopelessly corrupt data it either means that the data is damaged or extremely fragmented.
I would recommend booting to GPARTED (or PARTED if you like the terminal, it'll give you more feedback) to see if/how it recognises the partitions, but don't get your hopes up.
This. And you can take it further. First of all, have you ran a diagnostic test on the drive? Most manufactures have a diagnostic test you can use to determine the health of your drive. CrystalDisk is also a neat lil' tool.
On the actual data recovery side, assuming you have bad sectors on the drive, some of those tools will try to move all data out of the bad sectors and into currently readable sectors where data recovery could be performed. Keep in mind, the more you read and write to the drive, the less likely the chance of recovery.
If I were you, I would run a chkdsk /r on the drive to fix filesystem and flag bad sectors and THEN use a tool like GetDataBack or TestDisk. But the fact that TestDisk failed, is a bad sign. If the data is THAT important to you, there are professional data recovery specialists in every major city. Here in Atlanta, they start at about $500.
