External Hard Drive Recovery: NTFS in linux, RAW in Windows

[supvato]

Hello, everyone. I doubt that I am the first one to go through these issues, but the symptoms are so specific I haven't been able to find a related post.

I have an external hard drive (NTFS) that more than likely has a corrupted file system. It takes some effort, but Mint detects it and mounts it, however, when trying to copy files from this drive to any other location, problems arise. It may copy a few files, but all of a sudden an error message pops up on any given file and the disk is not detected afterwards. I can hear the disk going (hanging), but it doesn't even show in fdisk -l. The system has to be shut down to disconnect the drive. Once the system is restarted the drive is detected again. I tried ntfsfix without any success. It gives a 'failed to sync device' error.

Since it is supposed to be a NTFS file system, I tried Windows. Here, the drive is also detected, however, it is detected as RAW format. Because of this, I cannot run chkdsk on the drive to repair any corrupted sectors.

Does anyone have an idea of how to get this fixed? All I want to do is copy (rescue) the remaining files in the hard drive so I can format the disk.

[nomko]

It may copy a few files, but all of a sudden an error message pops up on any given file

What kind of error message do you get? can you post some screenshots here of that error message if possible?

Another question, before using Linux, did you had any issues with that external drive?

[supvato]

I tried to reproduce the errors to get some screenshots and post them here. However, things seem to be working okay (at least up to now) on both Linux and Windows. I first went to Linux (since Windows wasn't recognizing the drive as NTFS yesterday) and copied some files. Seeing that this worked, I went to Windows, and it magically detected the hard drive and a scan disk box popped up suggesting there could be some error in the file system. I ran the scan disk successfully and found all the files in their corresponding folders. It is noteworthy that there was no need to create a 'Found' folder by the scan disk procedure, which mean that files were not corrupted or damaged.

Two things changed between yesterday and today: 1) yesterday I was copying from one 'faulty' external hard drive to 'healthy' external hard drive, whereas today I was copying from the 'faulty' external hard drive to the computer's internal hard drive, and 2) I connected the external hard drive to a different USB port (in the same computer).

This seems extremely odd. Just as a precaution, I will still copy all this files to another drive and format this hard drive.

[Mark Phelps]

Does anyone have an idea of how to get this fixed? All I want to do is copy (rescue) the remaining files in the hard drive so I can format the disk.

Sorry, but CHKDSK is definitely NOT going to work because Windows doesn't even think the drive has a filesystem on it.

What MIGHT work is the following:
1) Using a working PC, download the Minitool Partition Wizard Boot CD (Windows partitioning tool).
2) Burn that ISO file to a CD
3) Boot your PC from the CD
4) Try the Partition Recovery option to see if it restores the partition.

If that does not work, then you will need a working Windows PC using Windows data recovery apps. One free one you can use is Recuva. If that does not work, you can try RecoverMyFiles to see what it finds. Let it run in deepest discover mode -- preferably, overnight. If it finds the files and folders you want, you will then need to go online and buy a license to do the actual file recovery.

And finally, if none of those work, then you most likely have a "crashed drive" -- which is hardware failure -- and only a commercial data recovery service will then be able to retrieve your data. Those are VERY expensive -- starting at around $1000 USD.

[all41]

Also an intermiittent usb cable or dirty connector can cause strange behaviour.
I clean the cable and the ports using the end of a pipe cleaner dampened in alchohol.
This cured an intermittent wireless keyboard/mouse issue.

But I would definitely off-load those files while you have it up and going.

[deleted]

Can gparted repair it?
-Hinto

[coffee412]

Hello, everyone. I doubt that I am the first one to go through these issues, but the symptoms are so specific I haven't been able to find a related post.

I have an external hard drive (NTFS) that more than likely has a corrupted file system. It takes some effort, but Mint detects it and mounts it, however, when trying to copy files from this drive to any other location, problems arise. It may copy a few files, but all of a sudden an error message pops up on any given file and the disk is not detected afterwards. I can hear the disk going (hanging), but it doesn't even show in fdisk -l. The system has to be shut down to disconnect the drive. Once the system is restarted the drive is detected again. I tried ntfsfix without any success. It gives a 'failed to sync device' error.

Since it is supposed to be a NTFS file system, I tried Windows. Here, the drive is also detected, however, it is detected as RAW format. Because of this, I cannot run chkdsk on the drive to repair any corrupted sectors.

Does anyone have an idea of how to get this fixed? All I want to do is copy (rescue) the remaining files in the hard drive so I can format the disk.

We are actually talking data recovery from a failing hard drive here. Always do recovery from an image file not from the failing drive. In fact, You do not want to do anything but get an image first.

Get an img off that drive right away. Dont wait. Do the best you can

Use the dd command to make an image file from the failing drive.
Command: (replace whats needed)

dd if=/dev/sdX of=/dev/sdY conv=sync,noerror

Do your recovery from the img. Hopefully you will get a good img and then mount that image

First mount it similar to this:

sudo mount -o loop /home/user/imagefile.img /mnt/test

Then see about recoverying files.