hello everyone I have spent the last daytrying to recover from the following, I believe the autorepair (which ran automatically when it realized it couldnt complete the update process ofc damaged a few subtle things that created very big problems) using a live linux iso, I tried to mount the partition that had the data (it has 4 partitions, EFI , windows recovery, recovery partition and the big one with all my stuff inside) but it was throwing an error doing it from live linux so I installed a separate drive installed windows there from that drive, I am able to open the encrypted partition with the correct password but the partition itself is reported as RAW when I am 99.99% confident it was NTFS since I had large files there over the 4 GB limit so its safe to assume it was NFTS while I have backups ofc I am paying a price here and would like to recover as much as I can I have read some posts /articles that lead me to believe that, where I am I should be able to make progress by recreating the partition table but this step I want to get expert feedback to not make the situation worse specifically what software is recommended to make a full image of the drive that was fully encrypted. (if it was linux I would use dd but since I am operating in windows to have a closer env to what I had this running in I want to use a windows tool, I see reflectium was recommended but then I read some people reporting issues ) I would prefer to make the image first , mount it and then try to operate in it any suggestions, as everyone here can imagine, are valuable as gold to me
If you have a GUID Partition Table on your corrupted device / volume then just create an identical GUID Partition Table (on a USB stick for instance) (which normally has a protected MBR (first 512 bytes (LBA 0) to protect against old DOS systems saying that the entire disk is taken), followed by another 512 bytes (LBA 1) representing the primary GPT header followed by 128 entries of 128 bytes each (starting at LBA 2) representing partition definitions (total 16384 bytes) plus the first 1024 bytes (PMBR + PGPT Header.) Meaning.... just copy the first 17408 bytes from your identical GPT to your corrupted device (disk / volume). Then forget about the backup / secondary GPT parts at the end of the disk as that will be repaired by most modern partition managers (they have to according GPT specifications). Good luck. BTW you can use FinalCrypt to print your GPTable (just double click on your device: /dev/sdb or whatever you use and it will be printed on screen hexadecimal column in little endian notation). The below FinalCrypt printscreens show the GPT table from my Windows disk. Here you can find FinalCrypt: https://sites.google.com/site/ronuitholland/home/finalcrypt Here is an example of how to backup and restore your GPT: Backup: "dd if=/dev/sdx of=MyGPT.img bs=17408 count=1" Restore: "dd if=MyGPT.img of=/dev/sdx bs=17408 count=1"
