data in a hard disk partition with vmdk files vanishes without a trace
 

I have a WD Elements 1 TB hard disk. It came with a default partition, which I compressed and divided into 3. The original partition (292 GB) used to appear and disappear at whim, but when it did, it had several files with names Ubuntu vmdks.. I filled that disk with a lot of data and the data kept showing up regularly, until one day, when it didn't.

It was as if the entire partition was reset or something, but I hadn't done anything to it.

I had run testdisk on the partition, and it recovered extremely old files from it (around 100MB), but it had data of around 290GB. I have a few theories :

1. from the presence of vmdk files, it seems that perhaps there was some VM that was there..

2. The file system type may have changed, and the data may be restored if we can revert it back to the file system in which I had saved data.

I know its not ext, as I could access it from Windows. Kindly help.

"It came with a default partition, which I compressed and divided into 3."

Maybe more exact, you shrunk the partition. What tool did you use? Some don't work well if older or odd issue.

Some ide drives in cases may need to have master jumper removed. Is this ide or sata? Is it connected directly?


The 100mb suggests to me windows 7.

Where did you get this disk from?

Run the WD diags on it long test.

Filesystems don't easily change and still work.

Run memtest too.

This website might help if the Western Digital is an external:-:)
I think these are SATA-

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=470

http://store.westerndigital.com/stor...nts+1+tb&Go=Go

Unless it was re-formatted right; jefro?

Yes, I meant that, thanks.