MBR Fail / Data Recovery

[Tom Tancredi]

Hey All,

Set my homebrew system to install the Windows 10 Anniversary , then came back yesterday and noticed something odd on it. Windows politely told me that the folders (desktop, documents, etc.) mapped to my M drive were invalid.

So checked the device manager, detected; disk management, uhmm not detected. Used AOEMI to repair MBR; rebooted, drive needed to be set to letter (put it back as M) and.. now in a RAW state - Son of a.....

Started to scour what tools I had, tried EUSEUS, and a couple others, didn't really 'see' anything because it is a 'unformatted drive' (stupid Windows I don't to format my data! LOL). Got MiniTool to display the folders and structure correctly, buttttt when i go to recover it blanks out (WTH??) http://screencast.com/t/IStOn0zp . Trying with TestDisk at the moment, but all the threads here seems to be 5 years or so old, talking older OSes (XP), or SPAM filled 'buy my product' answers. I am going to try i-Code next if Test Disk can't recover.

My criteria: Looking for a FREE (not trial / Demo) solution to
A) Restore in place data structure (basically rebuild the MBR off the folders, than just 'resetting' the MBR)
B) Restore in the data structure from the drive to my external drive
C) LAST absolute choice is just a recover of data (no data structure - aka folders) ; I think Recuva might work, but as I said I am making that a last ditch effort as it isn't just Docs and pics, but music, movies, various files types I was working on my desktop with, etc.


Any other suggestions I am not aware of would be appreciative, as I haven't looked for MBR / partition repair tools for a few years now, and relied on Recuva for most peoples "I just want my docs and pics" request when they asked for my help.

 

[Tom Tancredi]

UPDATE: TestDisk wanted to write back on the drive, which I cancelled (don't want to write over the data I am recovering). i-Code doesn only 1GB, unless I fork over $70. Recuva can't see it because it isn't a formatted drive (UGH!).

Logged out of my account (since desktop, document, etc. isn't showing) and logged into my emergency Admin account I had as backup. Trying AOMEI's Partition Recovery Wizard and see how it does firtst, then will try Minitool and sees if it gives this seperate account a 'blank' list to restore too.

 

[Tom Tancredi]

Found in my email my old key for MiniTool Power Data Recovery, which the Free edition is limited to 1GB. The screencap is because my mapping of user folders was messed up, so it affected the display in File Manager. I did note, you need to scan for the files first, then exit out, saving the last scan. When you rerun the program then open the previous scan it actually organizes it correctly as the normal file structure, than the willy nilly way it first presents it.

Able to recover it all. Went back to the drive, did a format, then check disk, came up clean. I suspect, as been the case with ALL major version changes before 7>8, 8>8.1, 7/8.1>10; that if your mapping is not the 'defined Microsoft way' for any reason it frags it up. So in my observational opinion, Microsoft Windows 10 Anniversary Edition would most likely be referred to as Windows 10.2 (since we had the first big service pack / 'update' that changed alot of the code back when Windows was first released).