Repairing a broken NTFS disk?
Author
I got a tiny problem: The HDD of my brand new laptop(less than a month old) broke down yesterday. Since I already contacted Dell about it on friday that it was giving me disk errors, they're sending someone over to replace it on monday(Excellent warranty, so glad I didn't get another shit HP).
The disk is giving read errors and fails the Dell integrated test. It worked fine until last night, when it BSOD on me and now refuses to boot(it's unable to find the bootloader). The problem is, there are still dataz on the disk I want to access, such as 4 weeks of e-mail, a prototype project I was building and which I didn't put into subversion yet and a handful of documents.
I accessed the disk under an Ubunutu live CD, which worked great for the data partition, but it shows the boot disk as empty. I'm assuming the partition bitmap is knackered but I still want to try to get that data off.
Any idea on how to fix the disk? I have a Windows Vista 32-bit DVD here, but the OS itself is 64-bit(Still waiting on that 64-bit DVD to arrive). Can I use the DVD to try and recover the disk? Or are there better tools out there which I can use?
Toolmaker
So wait, you can access your data partition just fine, but can't access your boot partition? Or do you mean your MBR is corrupted and you can't access any partition at all?
Author
I can see both partitions, and I can mount them, but my boot partition shows up as empty under Ubuntu.
Copying from the data partition results in failure in some cases. I want to attempt to salvage what I can. The idea of losing 4 weeks of e-mail isn't too pleasing. While there is nothing of vital importance in there, I still had a handful of unanswered mails and I want that prototype project back. It's a few hours worth of work.
Toolmaker
Copying from the data partition results in failure in some cases. I want to attempt to salvage what I can. The idea of losing 4 weeks of e-mail isn't too pleasing. While there is nothing of vital importance in there, I still had a handful of unanswered mails and I want that prototype project back. It's a few hours worth of work.
Toolmaker
you can get lower level programs that search the drive without needing any of that don't you? the kind the cops use to look for kiddie porn that's been deleted and suchlike, i can't remember what any of them are called but i know they're available for personal use as well since a few mates have had to use them, the only downside being if you've used the pc there's a danger some of the data has already been overwritten but i doubt that'd apply to you..?
maybe run that on a master drive and plug the laptop drive into the pc using one of them converter ide ribbons as a slave? probably a bit of effort but throwing it out there.
edit: i dunno about laptops, but on my girlfriends crappy seagate external hard drive the warranty covered data recovery so they got all her crap back, dunno if dell would have a similar service or if it's just the laptop as a whole... also my method above might void any warranty, bleh!
maybe run that on a master drive and plug the laptop drive into the pc using one of them converter ide ribbons as a slave? probably a bit of effort but throwing it out there.
edit: i dunno about laptops, but on my girlfriends crappy seagate external hard drive the warranty covered data recovery so they got all her crap back, dunno if dell would have a similar service or if it's just the laptop as a whole... also my method above might void any warranty, bleh!
I'd recommended dd'ing out whatever data from the partition you can into a file of some sort, moving it out of your laptop, and later on using a low-lever searcher on the file through a loop device. The data is probably there, but the block ordering must be wonky. There are tools that can sift through data streams and reconstruct a file system out there.
If the disk is spinning it's pretty easy to recover data these days with something like EasyRecovery Pro
I'm sure there are free Linux alternatives like dd on Linux but it really comes down to how much your time is worth because there is no easy gui to use?
The only time it hasn't been able to recover my lost data is when I accidently used Ghost to clone over a drive-DOH!
p.s. Sometimes you can actually get away with just booting from Vista DVD and running a chkdsk from the command prompt you can get from repair options on the bad drive and that might get the system up long enough to copy the data you want.
At least I would try that first.
I'm sure there are free Linux alternatives like dd on Linux but it really comes down to how much your time is worth because there is no easy gui to use?
The only time it hasn't been able to recover my lost data is when I accidently used Ghost to clone over a drive-DOH!
p.s. Sometimes you can actually get away with just booting from Vista DVD and running a chkdsk from the command prompt you can get from repair options on the bad drive and that might get the system up long enough to copy the data you want.
At least I would try that first.
If the disk is accessible then you should be able to recover data from it. But keep in mind that if the MFT can't be recovered then the best you can do is recover clusters. This means that if the file was large enough to spread across multiple clusters, you'll have to tell the recovery program the size of the files you're looking for. The MFT lists what clusters held what files, and if that is missing the best the program can do is recover the data recoverable from each cluster, and if the program resides on multiple clusters you tell it the size and it will try to recover data is groups of clusters that equal your size. But the bitch of this is that if the MFT is missing AND your drive was fragmented, it will be almost impossible to recover the data without pieces (clusters) missing, so the recovered files would most likely return corrupted.
I also recommend Easy Recover Pro, but i also like EaseUs data recovery. I personally recently used EaseUs and found it quite nice. It first will scan for any drives that exist, even ones that don't show under windows but are plugged in, it will then try to recover any MFT/FAT's that exist and if so use those to reference specific clusters that will rebuild the files. Even if the MFT/FAT are missing it will then attempt RAW file recovery. If your files are small enough you may be lucky enough to recover the files even if the MFT doesn't exist.
Good Luck!
P.s. If you're sure you didn't get sector errors (showing signs of physical damage) and you think it is just software corruption, you can attempt FIXMBR and FIXBOOT to fix the main boot files required for the boot process. However, Vista has changed the names of those commands, so you'll need to search google a bit to find the Vista specific recovery commands, i don't remember them off hand.
I also recommend Easy Recover Pro, but i also like EaseUs data recovery. I personally recently used EaseUs and found it quite nice. It first will scan for any drives that exist, even ones that don't show under windows but are plugged in, it will then try to recover any MFT/FAT's that exist and if so use those to reference specific clusters that will rebuild the files. Even if the MFT/FAT are missing it will then attempt RAW file recovery. If your files are small enough you may be lucky enough to recover the files even if the MFT doesn't exist.
Good Luck!
P.s. If you're sure you didn't get sector errors (showing signs of physical damage) and you think it is just software corruption, you can attempt FIXMBR and FIXBOOT to fix the main boot files required for the boot process. However, Vista has changed the names of those commands, so you'll need to search google a bit to find the Vista specific recovery commands, i don't remember them off hand.
Author
Well, I think the disk is severely buttraped:
In other words, the disk surface is physically damaged, and I doubt I can recover any data from it. I'm currently using Acronis Disk Director to see if I can recover it, but I'm having severe doubts about this.
Toolmaker
In other words, the disk surface is physically damaged, and I doubt I can recover any data from it. I'm currently using Acronis Disk Director to see if I can recover it, but I'm having severe doubts about this.
Toolmaker
If it is not already too late, give dd_rescue a try (should come with Ubuntu, if it doesn't, it is on the sysrescue CD).
This has once saved near 90% of my data in a similar case. Note that dd_rescue seemingly takes forever to run, but that's normal.
You first back up the whole file system into an image on another disk, and then do a filesystem repair on that image after mounting it. There's a detailled howto on that on the net.
With any luck, you lose some data and some file/folder names, but still get most of your data back.
In any case, I recommend not to boot into Windows, because in another case, I've had it happen that one of those dumb ass "intelligent" tools fired up and said "ohhhh... seems like the HD is not so good any more, let's mark all the bad sectors". When that happens, the sectors with your data are remapped, and any data you might still have is gone forever, no tool will be able to restore it.
This has once saved near 90% of my data in a similar case. Note that dd_rescue seemingly takes forever to run, but that's normal.
You first back up the whole file system into an image on another disk, and then do a filesystem repair on that image after mounting it. There's a detailled howto on that on the net.
With any luck, you lose some data and some file/folder names, but still get most of your data back.
In any case, I recommend not to boot into Windows, because in another case, I've had it happen that one of those dumb ass "intelligent" tools fired up and said "ohhhh... seems like the HD is not so good any more, let's mark all the bad sectors". When that happens, the sectors with your data are remapped, and any data you might still have is gone forever, no tool will be able to restore it.
Quote:Original post by Toolmaker
Well, I think the disk is severely buttraped:
..image...
In other words, the disk surface is physically damaged, and I doubt I can recover any data from it. I'm currently using Acronis Disk Director to see if I can recover it, but I'm having severe doubts about this.
Toolmaker
aw man, that's pure bad luck, i know how infuriating that must be, my housemate had a hard drive failure with his disseration on, next day his secondary hard drive which had all the latest versions backed up decided to die too, lecturer didn't believe a word, which is understandable
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