So, there you have it. I'm looking at an AIO PC which is not booting and having a look with both a Win 10 and Linux/Gparted USB, only the recovery partition is there. Of course, there is a Windows partition somewhere, but how to get to it?
Has anyone here ever run into this and solved it?
You need a data recovery program that can scan for logical disks, you need to unplug it, and boot from a different disk, then scan the disk need recovering, and recover the data to a 3rd disk.
Not sure if this helps, go to computer management, if the lost partition there, try to assigned drive letter to it.
Do you need to keep the data?
If not, just reinstall windows and see how it goes. If yes, remove the hard drive out and connect it to another computer and use recovery software as others have mentioned.
What everyone else said but I'll throw in a suggestion to check the SMART data with Crystal Disk Info and ensure the HDD doesn't have a bunch of bad sectors or other obvious signs of failure.
Thanks everyone. Yeah, I know about data recovery, I was mainly surprised. This is the first time I've had a completely "unscathed" partition (can go in and out of it w/o issue) whilst the others are simply not there at all.
I decided to use an old Parted Magic CD. First time in, the drive wasn't showing up. So, I restarted. On reboot, I opened the Mount tool and the drive was there! I opened two file windows and transferred the documents they wanted. Immediately after— poof! No more drive. At least I got the docs, but a shame about the PC. It's just a basic AIO, but you'd hope to get more than 2 years out of it.
Now I'm off to see if it's a sh1tshow to open it to swap drives.
Thanks again!
Yes, download TestDisk from https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk and use it to recover lost partitions.