Question OS Partition gone missing (2 partitions now showing as 1 Healthy, missing files)

[bigweeze]

Hi,

I have a ~3 year old HDD (1TB Barracuda) which I originally split into 2 partitions, roughly 500GB each.
- OS (Windows/programs)
- Data (everything else)

The drive was damaged recently when I picked up the laptop squeezing the HD area. I'd noticed a bit of flex in the body and then found I was unable to boot up.

Since, I've managed to connect the drive externally to another instance of Windows and found the following when I run Disk Manager.
- Disk 1 showing 1 partition, Data (E:\), for 931.50 GB NTFS, labelled "Healthy"
- no sign of the OS partition

Is there anything that can be done to restore the OS partition? Looking to salvage some files if possible.

Thanks in advance!

https://imgur.com/xiQ5tdt

 

[Lafong]

Have you done any testing to see if the drive is in good health, despite the loss of the partition?

If the drive is in good health, I'd assume you could reinstall Windows onto it easily enough.

Is that unacceptable?

Have you decided if anything is missing from the E partition and that only Windows and installed applications are apparently lost?

It is possible you just lost a partition and it can be recovered, but I wouldn't think "squeezing" a laptop would cause that. Quite possible something else is going on.

 

[fzabkar]

Can you show us the Partitions tab in DMDE?

https://dmde.com/

 

[bigweeze]

Thanks for the questions Lafong, have answered below as best I can.

Have you done any testing to see if the drive is in good health, despite the loss of the partition?

Have you decided if anything is missing from the E partition and that only Windows and installed applications are apparently lost?

I'm not sure what test to run to determine if the drive is in good health, but I was able to retrieve all of the files off my Data partition and they seem fine.

The pinned post suggested to run Recuva, it only found unrecoverable/poor files on the Data partition. Nothing off the OS partition.

If the drive is in good health, I'd assume you could reinstall Windows onto it easily enough.

Is that unacceptable?

I went out and bought a SSD for a fresh install so it's not necessary, though you may be correct that the drive is still usable going forward. After this salvage exercise is complete, I may try and use it for backup storage though am a bit wary of it.

It is possible you just lost a partition and it can be recovered, but I wouldn't think "squeezing" a laptop would cause that. Quite possible something else is going on.

As it was working perfectly for 3 years and not working immediately after, that's all I can theorize. I did hold a less sturdy area of the frame where I don't usually pick it up from near the corner below the keyboard area (and it is 6.4 lbs-Lenovo Y740 17"). No irregular usage comes to mind while the system was last powered on.

 

[bigweeze]

Can you show us the Partitions tab in DMDE?

https://dmde.com/

It too shows 1 large partition, aside from 16MB reserved for Microsoft. I'll try running the full scan and report back later today.

https://imgur.com/a/kqR10Fu