Can't assign drive letters to partitions

c627627 said:

I think I got the whole thing figured out or as much as it is useful for me:




Testdisk http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk


• To recover a damaged partition table:

1. Start testdisk_win.exe

2. Create a new log file

3. Scroll down to drive which contains the damaged partition table > Proceed

4. Intel > Analyse > Quick Search

5. Should TestDisk search for partition created under Vista ? > Y


6. If the lost partition was a primary partition, move arrows to change * to P and press Enter.
[P may already be there, if it is, still go to the next step to 'Write partition table'.]


7. Move arrows to Write and press Enter.

8. Write partition table, confirm ? (Y/N) > Y

9. You will have to reboot for the change to take effect.




• To recover individual files / individual directories from a hard drive which cannot display them in Windows because of a damaged partition table:

1. Copy Testdisk to hard drive with enough space to recover the lost files/directories
then start testdisk_win.exe

2. Create a new log file

3. Scroll down to drive which contains the files/directories to recover > Proceed

4. Intel > Analyse > Quick Search

5. Should TestDisk search for partition created under Vista ? > Y


6. Instead of moving arrows to get to the letter P, physically press key P on your keyboard.
This lists the files and directories

7. Now use arrows to move down to select any file or directory and press C on keyboard to copy selected file or directory.

or

To copy all files and directories, move the arrow to the top marked with one dot: .
Then press C on keyboard and all files and directories will be copied to the location where you ran TestDisk from.



• Use instructions above to recover files/directories from a hard drive with a damaged partition table.
If partitions already exist, it may be recovered to an image file. To create an image of the entire partition:

0. Copy Testdisk to hard drive with enough space to store the image of the partition

1. Create a new folder inside which you want to save the image.dd file then start testdisk_win.exe

2. Create a new log file

3. Scroll down to drive which contains the partition to copy > Proceed

4. Intel > Advanced > Scroll down to partition to recover

5. Use right arrow to get to Image Creation > Enter

6. Select where to store the image.dd file > Press Enter then press the Y key on keyboard.

7. File image.dd will contain the recovered partition.

You can use freeware such as OSFMount to mount image.dd files to access files inside them directly.

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