I have a 1TB NTFS-formatted drive 95% filled with data that has not yet been backed up, the data on it is fresh and is very valuable to me. Been running in a Windows 7 machine. Now, some errors appeared - I'm not going to mention all of it because it's irrelevant at this point in time. A folder worth 400GB of data with 350 folders all of a sudden disappeared (I thought), but I later found it in a very random folder. This is one of the things, plus some odd error messages. Worth noting is that the data seems OK and intact, I have found no broken files as of yet. I have not used chkdsk, knowing that COULD make things worse.
The machine is now turned off and I'm just waiting to get the harddrive. I will not start it again. This is where I need help. Should I...
- Clonezilla (I don't even know how that works, but I could learn)
- Mount drive read-only in linux and make a full-disk image (bit-by-bit)
- Mount drive read-only in linux and copy everything file by file to a secure location
- Other options, please? Is there an option in linux which can create a 1:1-drive-image which could be mounted in Windows later on, or can they only be mounted in linux itself?
Remember:
1) I dont know if it's a software failure, a failing harddrive or a corrupt filesystem. I don't really want to find out, until everything is backed up.
2) There is a lot of data, 1 TB, hundreds of thousands of files (literally).
3) No matter whats wrong, I'm considering I have one chance to rescue the data, so I have to pick wisely, thats why I'm asking you guys.
I would really appreciate any help I could get here...
THANKS
The machine is now turned off and I'm just waiting to get the harddrive. I will not start it again. This is where I need help. Should I...
- Clonezilla (I don't even know how that works, but I could learn)
- Mount drive read-only in linux and make a full-disk image (bit-by-bit)
- Mount drive read-only in linux and copy everything file by file to a secure location
- Other options, please? Is there an option in linux which can create a 1:1-drive-image which could be mounted in Windows later on, or can they only be mounted in linux itself?
Remember:
1) I dont know if it's a software failure, a failing harddrive or a corrupt filesystem. I don't really want to find out, until everything is backed up.
2) There is a lot of data, 1 TB, hundreds of thousands of files (literally).
3) No matter whats wrong, I'm considering I have one chance to rescue the data, so I have to pick wisely, thats why I'm asking you guys.
I would really appreciate any help I could get here...
THANKS