[SOLVED] GPT > MBR Conversion FAIL: 8TB HDD showing as 1.3TB, almost completely unrecoverable data loss. Please HELP!

[jamiewhite]

I'm not exactly new to data recovery, I've dabbled in the past but especially now after weeks of researching and attempting to fix the issue myself. All I've managed to do though, is change the problem and not find an actual solution.


TL;DR,
I had an 8TB HDD as NTFS GPT, was not playing nice with other devices at all, so I converted it from GPT to MBR "non-destructively"... and lost all data. Now it shows as 1.3TB and most files I find are corrupt/bad.

Pls pls pls, send help. I don't mind losing most of it, it'll be a pain to install and download everything on there again, but I'm more upset that 10 years of personal photos are now gone in the wind.

OS: Windows 10 (2004)
Secondary HDD: 8TB Seagate Barracuda ST8000DM004
File System: NTFS
Partition Map: Originally GPT (then to MBR and back to GPT again)


The Long Story:
My mistake began with taking my 8TB Internal Hard Drive out of my PC and placing it in an external enclosure to take with me on holiday.
When I got there, I had an issue that's come up a bunch of times now (and is why I will NEVER use GPT again), my NVidia Shield and my MacBook would not recognise my hard drive. I already did everything so they could read and write NTFS. Eventually I found that GPT does not play nice, either at all or when you remove the drive from the original PC.

In my haste to actually be able to access my files, rather than cutting my holiday short, I did the deed. I attempted to convert my hard drive to MBR from GPT, without data loss... from a Mac. Yeah, I couldn't have made a more stupid decision, could I? Alas, I can't turn back time.
Now I'm left with a hard drive that registers as 1.3TB on all my devices and any amount of recovery results in a few measly text files, pictures or videos. I should mention that I had filled 6TB's worth of space before "The Event". I've even tried converting back to GPT, in the hopes it would gather its marbles. It didn't.

Now I'm unsure what to do. Recovery software works to varying degrees, some not at all. MiniTool, Stellar, Easeus, Paragon, more than I can recall off-hand, all the big names have utterly failed. I then discovered DMDE which is fantastic (I will absolutely be buying a lifetime license) but still, I'm recovering mostly corrupt/bad files. I haven't got down to a granular level and tried fixing the bad files themselves yet, but I don't want to do much more if there's some way I can recover the original partition still, from the GPT partition table/map, if that's even possible. Technically the drive hasn't been formatted. Unless the conversion did that, but it stated it was the only way without data loss. I did research heavily before doing it. But the worst happened and now I don't know if I should give up, format and then try recovery, or just hold out for a professional at a later date.
It means I'm out a large hard drive currently, as well as all my files, media and games that are still there. I can see most of the files in DMDE (the singular copies of 10 year's worth of personal photos are strangely the only thing missing entirely) and I can try to recover them. The issue is more are corrupt than not and I don't have another drive big enough to recover everything now and worry later.

Please, someone save me.


If there's anything else, any other information I can give to assist people in helping me I'm very willing.
Thank you in advance to anyone able to give some input.

 

[jamiewhite]

I would clone your drive with ddrescue or HDDSuperClone, and then work on the clone. It does seem that you have more than one problem, :-(

So I've done a full scan and have a whole bunch of results. I ticked for it to scan for all filesystem types, just in case, as I did the deed on a Mac and thought there might be pertinent information to be found. I've screenshotted the whole list and I'll attach them below. I should imagine most of it is nonsense but I'm hoping you can highlight anything of worth and direct me further.

As it is, I'm also looking into buying another new drive currently. If I'm going to do that I'd rather just go the whole hog and get an SSD storage drive. I'm looking at 2-4TB Drives, anywhere from around just under £150 up to £250+, of which the MX500 seems to come out best, as well as the obvious but more expensive Samsung EVO line (any advice regarding this topic is very welcome also).

 

[USAFRet]

For a SATA III SSD, the MX500 is equal in performance to the Samsung, but less expensive.
I'd have no issue with that in any of my systems.

 

[jamiewhite]

For a SATA III SSD, the MX500 is equal in performance to the Samsung, but less expensive.
I'd have no issue with that in any of my systems.

For a SATA III SSD, the MX500 is equal in performance to the Samsung, but less expensive.
I'd have no issue with that in any of my systems.

At £140 brand new for 1TB, the MX500 sells itself honestly. The difference in quality/components seems to make little discernable difference apparently. They only thing I read is that it can hit a saturation point once the cache is full.

The only question is whether to go for that or try to find a good deal on any 4TB drive. £250+ is a hard sell, but I could eat the cost for a little less if I thought it would be an end to the worry about my disk based storage dying. Obviously, that's not what happened here, but it does nag at the back of my mind.

Either way, it would free me up to play with this troublesome hard drive or even take the time to find and take it to a professional, without being out a storage drive the whole time. Eventually then I could sell the hard drive, or better yet, use it for redundancy and stuff I don't really need to access all the time.


I'm still hoping to find at least a film ordered list of all the folders and files, even if they themselves aren't recoverable as of yet. That would be a good start, to know exactly what I lost and what I need to get back. Unfortunately, these RAW items and the random $F0----- folders are a nuisance.

 

[USAFRet]

"At £140 brand new for 1TB "
??

£97....
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Crucial-MX500-CT1000MX500SSD1-NAND-Internal/dp/B077SF8KMG

 

[jamiewhite]

"At £140 brand new for 1TB "
??

£97....
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Crucial-MX500-CT1000MX500SSD1-NAND-Internal/dp/B077SF8KMG

Sorry! I'm an incommensurate idiot, as per usual.
It's a 2TB MX500 on eBay and the seller (because I'm watching it) has sent me an offer of £140. So far that sounds like the best deal possible, without an auction popping up that doesn't get the right attention. This is how I usually buy things 😅
If I can afford it, I go Amazon for the customer service. Everything else, to eBay it is.

I'm just unsure whether to hold out for that special 4TB listing that sometimes go for under £250 🙇🏻‍♂️

 

[USAFRet]

Sorry! I'm an incommensurate idiot, as per usual.
It's a 2TB MX500 on eBay and the seller (because I'm watching it) has sent me an offer of £140. So far that sounds like the best deal possible, without an auction popping up that doesn't get the right attention. This is how I usually buy things 😅
If I can afford it, I go Amazon for the customer service. Everything else, to eBay it is.

I'm just unsure whether to hold out for that special 4TB listing that sometimes go for under £250 🙇🏻‍♂️

Is this actual "Brand New" ? Do you get the full Crucial warranty?
If not, I'd shy away. Used storage devices are rarely a good idea.

 

[jamiewhite]

Is this actual "Brand New" ? Do you get the full Crucial warranty?
If not, I'd shy away. Used storage devices are rarely a good idea.

I'm not entirely sure what the warranty would be, that'd be worth a check. Good shout! It is brand new and sealed though, with the seller having a high rating. eBay has excellent customer service and their own guarantee hasn't failed me yet.
If a deals too good, usually either it is and something is fishy or the seller doesn't know what they have (or perhaps they don't care that much about profit).

I'm keeping an open mind and I'll enquire about the warranty as you suggested.

I'm going to have another run at the hard drive later. I've been avoiding it thus far, hoping someone might have some info regarding what the hell I'm looking at I'm DMDE 😅

 

[USAFRet]

What the seller says about the warranty is mostly irrelevant.
What does Crucial say?

 

[jamiewhite]

I would clone your drive with ddrescue or HDDSuperClone, and then work on the clone. It does seem that you have more than one problem, :-(

So I've had a look through the full scan details now, and I have found a bunch of OS level stuff. When scanning one of the smaller random partitions, the loading message says "Found MFT fragments". When it has loaded upon looking through it all I can see things like the System Volume Information folder, files like "bootmgr, IndexerVolumeGuid" etc. Is this stuff of use?

And finally, I found the folder with the photos! How strange, it's only under this secondary 6.19TB partition, not the first 6.42TB result.
Looking at it, for the most part, this is exactly what you were intending me to find before with the quick scan. It's my original folder structure and everything. Some folders have been duplicated and are empty or corrupt and their contents are instead listed under the other partitions for some reason.

So, how would I go about this now? Is there any way to clone only part of the disk?
(I know this sounds silly but it's worth asking, I can afford to lose most of it. Or maybe there is some crazy compression technique?)

Can I backup and copy elsewhere any of this important stuff and try what you originally said, to recover the boot sector?
(Worst case scenario, I have an even more confused drive but still have the keys to the kingdom.)

Should I then just go for it?

 

[fzabkar]

The free version will only allow you to recover 4000 files from any one folder. Just r-click the desired folder and "Recover ..." to another drive.

The standard version costs US$20.

I suspect that part of the reason why the solution did not turn out to be straightforward was probably because of the 1.4TB capacity problem. If the OS thinks that the file system is 8TB, then when you write data beyond the 2TiB point, your enclosure's firmware wraps around to sector 0 and writes your data to the wrong location. For example, if you write to the 3TiB point, the enclosure will instead write to 1TiB (3TiB - 2TiB). The max capacity for 32-bit LBAs is 2TiB.

 

[jamiewhite]

The free version will only allow you to recover 4000 files from any one folder. Just r-click the desired folder and "Recover ..." to another drive.

The standard version costs US$20.

I suspect that part of the reason why the solution did not turn out to be straightforward was probably because of the 1.4TB capacity problem. If the OS thinks that the file system is 8TB, then when you write data beyond the 2TiB point, your enclosure's firmware wraps around to sector 0 and writes your data to the wrong location. For example, if you write to the 3TiB point, the enclosure will instead write to 1TiB (3TiB - 2TiB). The max capacity for 32-bit LBAs is 2TiB.

I have yet to actually buy the full version, but even if I don't use it right now, I will be buying it regardless. I'll do it shortly actually. It's just so nice compared to all the brand name bloat. Any other tools like this I should know about?

Regarding my issue, I took the risk and restored the boot sector. Were there steps to follow that? Because now the drive doesn't show in Windows Explorer and shows a blank in Windows Disk Management. But I can still access it in DMDE.
As for DMDE, now I'm left with this:

With these as the options it offers me:

What would be the next logical step here if we were to go ahead with trying to reinstate the original partition as it was? Or is it any clearer now whether or not that is even possible?

 

[jamiewhite]

What the seller says about the warranty is mostly irrelevant.
What does Crucial say?

The seller got back to me and stated they were bought this month so they should technically have the full 5 year warranty that Crucial offer. They are still sealed. why he's selling it I don't know. might throw him that question while I wait for some 4TB listings to end.

Oh and I also settled on pCloud for my cloud backups and I'm trialing it atm. It's already better than Google Drive (I can't believe how bad that is and I've been paying them for it). Why it is so hard to find cloud storage with locally accessible (but not locally synced) storage I don't know. Altough it's telling that most include it if you pay. Luckily, pCloud has a network drive feature that does exactly this. Making using cloud storage as a primary "local" drive relatively easy.

So it'll be SSD > Cloud (pCloud, Google Photos) and I can look into cloning, shadow copies etc as well as automatic zipped up backups on this HDD when it's back in action.
Any tips on that are welcome too. I'm guessing there's some great scripts for it. I prefer that or some open-source or community driven effort, as opposed to the big corporate types.

 

[USAFRet]

"so they should technically have the full 5 year warranty that Crucial offer. "

Doesn't matter what he says....only matters what Crucial says.

https://www.crucial.com/company/warranty

------------------------
3. Assignment. Customer may not assign its rights or obligations hereunder without Micron CPG’s prior written approval.

5. Warranty. Unless otherwise prohibited by law, the warranties set forth below cover only Crucial-branded or Ballistix® memory products purchased in its original packaging from Crucial.com, Micron CPG, its subsidiaries, or its authorized resellers
iii. Limited Three Year Or Limited Five Year Warranty – Crucial® SSDs
Micron CPG warrants to the original end customer that its Crucial-branded solid state drive products are free from defects in material and workmanship affecting form, fit and function.
------------------------

" the original end customer "

So....Not you.

 

[jamiewhite]

"so they should technically have the full 5 year warranty that Crucial offer. "

Doesn't matter what he says....only matters what Crucial says.

https://www.crucial.com/company/warranty

------------------------
3. Assignment. Customer may not assign its rights or obligations hereunder without Micron CPG’s prior written approval.

5. Warranty. Unless otherwise prohibited by law, the warranties set forth below cover only Crucial-branded or Ballistix® memory products purchased in its original packaging from Crucial.com, Micron CPG, its subsidiaries, or its authorized resellers
iii. Limited Three Year Or Limited Five Year Warranty – Crucial® SSDs
Micron CPG warrants to the original end customer that its Crucial-branded solid state drive products are free from defects in material and workmanship affecting form, fit and function.
------------------------

" the original end customer "

So....Not you.

I did read that page but completely missed this (most relevant bit):

"Crucial-branded or Ballistix® memory products purchased in its original packaging from Crucial.com, Micron CPG, its subsidiaries, or its authorized resellers"

It was very late and I'm very tired/stressed in my defence 😖

That said, "in original packaging" is a ridiculous request. Warranty is warranty, failure is failure. Reading this, they don't come off as the most consumer-friendly bunch when it comes to warranty. Of which, I've seen examples of the best and worst myself first hand.
So yeah, doesn't instil much confidence or any feeling of being covered even if I were to buy this brand new from Amazon say. For a start, I'd have to leave it in the packaging and never use it or else risk them refusing cover.

 

[USAFRet]

"purchased in its original packaging " just means you bought it, in the original box, from them or an auth reseller ex. (Amazon/Newegg/BestBuy).

BUT....for a warranty you'd also have to provide the original invoice. Which you won't have in your name or email.
I had that with a Sandisk a couple years ago. "Please include the original invoice" (which of course I had)

 

[DSzymborski]

I did read that page but completely missed this (most relevant bit):




It was very late and I'm very tired/stressed in my defence 😖

That said, "in original packaging" is a ridiculous request. Warranty is warranty, failure is failure. Reading this, they don't come off as the most consumer-friendly bunch when it comes to warranty. Of which, I've seen examples of the best and worst myself first hand.
So yeah, doesn't instil much confidence or any feeling of being covered even if I were to buy this brand new from Amazon say. For a start, I'd have to leave it in the packaging and never use it or else risk them refusing cover.

That's not an unusual request by any means. In fact, it's the normal for most purchases. In return for buying the product, companies offer a contract that spells out both sides rights and responsibilities for a set period. When a third-party gets the item, they don't have a contract with that party unless the contract is explicitly convertible; they don't want a situation in which you mistreat a product, sell it to a third party and then have that third party innocently claiming that it was a worksmanship defect, not their fault. Unlike cars, there's no law in the United States that requires PC component warranties to be transferable.

A lot of companies do extend the warranty coverage to third parties. For example, EVGA and MSI tend to be very generous with the warranties to their GPUs (and they're both companies that cycle out their product lines quickly, meaning you frequently will end up with an actual upgrade -- I just had an EVGA 1070 turn into a 1070 Ti last year).

 

[USAFRet]

I just had an EVGA 1070 turn into a 1070 Ti last year).

Exactly.
My SanDisk Ultra II 960GB turned into a SanDisk Ultra 3D 1TB. Even though it was 33 days past the 3 year warranty.
It was past the time. I knew it, they knew it. They gave me a new one anyway.

I certainly wouldn't buy a "new" drive from fleabay.

 

[jamiewhite]

That's not an unusual request by any means. In fact, it's the normal for most purchases. In return for buying the product, companies offer a contract that spells out both sides rights and responsibilities for a set period. When a third-party gets the item, they don't have a contract with that party unless the contract is explicitly convertible; they don't want a situation in which you mistreat a product, sell it to a third party and then have that third party innocently claiming that it was a worksmanship defect, not their fault. Unlike cars, there's no law in the United States that requires PC component warranties to be transferable.

A lot of companies do extend the warranty coverage to third parties. For example, EVGA and MSI tend to be very generous with the warranties to their GPUs (and they're both companies that cycle out their product lines quickly, meaning you frequently will end up with an actual upgrade -- I just had an EVGA 1070 turn into a 1070 Ti last year).

Well it's funny you should mention EVGA, as they are exactly the reason why I stated I've seen the best. They really are a cut above. I received a personal call from the manager of European support to help me solve my issue, which was that I genuinely had a failed card replaced with another that failed immediately. That led to an upgrade that actually ended up spanning two generations, from 500 series to 700 series. That's beyond the call and then some.
The other example I had in mind, of the worst, was OnePlus's early EU customer service... oh boy. The less said the better.

As to Crucial, I'm a hoarder of original packaging and I scold myself for ripping it, even on first opening. That's just me, but it does always work in my favour. I just think it is bonkers to punish someone that might otherwise throw away a box. Especially when some of this packaging is absolutely nothing to write home about. Like the packaging for my SanDisk boot drive. I might say "what packaging?" or that I've seen better on some of my supermarket goods.
It's just an unfair stipulation that seems designed to weasel them out of responsibility. An invoice/receipt and adequate packaging for the return journey should be all that is required.
In the EU, especially here in the UK, the laws are pretty strongly in the favour of the consumer. It's one of the only great things about England right now

 

[jamiewhite]

"purchased in its original packaging " just means you bought it, in the original box, from them or an auth reseller ex. (Amazon/Newegg/BestBuy).

BUT....for a warranty you'd also have to provide the original invoice. Which you won't have in your name or email.
I had that with a Sandisk a couple years ago. "Please include the original invoice" (which of course I had)

Exactly.
My SanDisk Ultra II 960GB turned into a SanDisk Ultra 3D 1TB. Even though it was 33 days past the 3 year warranty.
It was past the time. I knew it, they knew it. They gave me a new one anyway.

I certainly wouldn't buy a "new" drive from fleabay.

Wow, noted. SanDisk goes on the Happy list I have one as my boot drive so it's very good to know.
I guess if it's not a spinning platter drive, I haven't and didn't even consider or worry about warranty. I can only hope that there's no reason they should fail outside of that writes rating they get... is there any reason they would otherwise die? Beyond say an act of dog (or cat), including power surges.

 

[USAFRet]

It's just an unfair stipulation that seems designed to weasel them out of responsibility. An invoice/receipt and adequate packaging for the return journey should be all that is required.
In the EU, especially here in the UK, the laws are pretty strongly in the favour of the consumer. It's one of the only great things about England right now

And from fleabay, you wouldn't have that first purchase invoice.

They're not necessarily you need to save the original box and send it back in that...just that you bought it like that.
That warranty is not unusual at all.
Buy it from them, no problem.
Buy it from some schmoe...problem. Because they have zero control over the supply chain.

It would be trivially easy to open that 2.5" SSD case, and replace the new 2TB guts with an ancient 64GB SATA II SSD.
User complains....who is on the hook for replacement?

 

[jamiewhite]

And from fleabay, you wouldn't have that first purchase invoice.

They're not necessarily you need to save the original box and send it back in that...just that you bought it like that.
That warranty is not unusual at all.
Buy it from them, no problem.
Buy it from some schmoe...problem. Because they have zero control over the supply chain.

It would be trivially easy to open that 2.5" SSD case, and replace the new 2TB guts with an ancient 64GB SATA II SSD.
User complains....who is on the hook for replacement?

Oh absolutely. No disagreement on my part. As I said, it didn't concern me at all due to it being an SSD rather than an HDD (rightly or wrongly). If that's a concern, as I said before, I will always go amazon.
Ebay gets a bad rap, but you're completely covered under their guarantee and unless you're completely not savvy and literate, so to speak, then it's fine. There's con merchants everywhere. Scan is the other big tech retailer in the UK. They are complete shysters in my experience (and another bad example of warranty support).
I always keep a PDF of the invoice and the original packaging, but most of that is through learning the hard way and experience. Not everyone has that. These warranties can get a little uptight on the wrong folk to try and weed out the bad ones, and in the end serves the companies monetarily at the same time.

 

[USAFRet]

Wow, noted. SanDisk goes on the Happy list I have one as my boot drive so it's very good to know.
I guess if it's not a spinning platter drive, I haven't and didn't even consider or worry about warranty. I can only hope that there's no reason they should fail outside of that writes rating they get... is there any reason they would otherwise die? Beyond say an act of dog (or cat), including power surges.

Why did that drive? Completely unknown.

It was literally...
Power off
Come back 10 minutes later, power on.
{hey, where's the SanDisk?}

Nothing I tried would make it come back to life.
Different SATA port, power cable.
External USB dock.
Different USB dock.
Internally in a Linux PC.
After a couple hours, I gave up.

Started the RMA process, knowing it was a little past the 3 year. Sent it in anyway.
SanDisk recognized that it was past...."Unfortunately, we no longer have that one in stock. If you agree, we'll send you this...."

 

[jamiewhite]

Anyone have a clue if this is the next step or good idea?

I'm looking everywhere for tutorials etc on DMDE but people keep just derailing those threads into a sales pitch for MiniTool or some other such.

 

[jamiewhite]

Why did that drive? Completely unknown.

It was literally...
Power off
Come back 10 minutes later, power on.
{hey, where's the SanDisk?}

Nothing I tried would make it come back to life.
Different SATA port, power cable.
External USB dock.
Different USB dock.
Internally in a Linux PC.
After a couple hours, I gave up.

Started the RMA process, knowing it was a little past the 3 year. Sent it in anyway.
SanDisk recognized that it was past...."Unfortunately, we no longer have that one in stock. If you agree, we'll send you this...."

Well done you! It's always nice when that happens.
It wasn't without a 11 month argument but I had Scan turn a crummy ThermalTake keyboard into a Corsair K63. I also had that nightmare 2 years with OnePlus that ended with getting every penny back because I basically took them to trading standards and my banks legal team. It was a miserable slog. The phones CPU was seriously unwell though, it would get up to 100 degrees C doing basic things like watching youtube.
I've had some... experiences...

Sounds like the only thing that could really have been is a power surge? But I wouldn't know much really. I wouldn't be here right now if I did