Hard drive corruption; please help!

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chumps52

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Mar 4, 2014
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Firstly, my current setup consists of a 250GB SSD for the OS and programs.
I also have a 1TB HDD for documents etc.

The 1TB HDD is partitioned as such:
250GB for Ubuntu
The rest (I think around 681GB) for my photos, documents etc.


The other day I booted up and my desktop had disappeared (which was stored on the HDD).



I went into My Computer and saw this:

V38xxVB.png


No Size, name etc..... Nothing.

I click on it and get this:

1FeySIF.jpg


And after clicking cancel:

Eu1yZBd.jpg


I went into disk management and saw this:

7wgC1Cf.png




So I immediately begin frantically searching the web. Numerous results point me to TestDisk, and thus I ran the analyze tool.

Firstly I see this, which appeared at about 35%:

7e4x3MQ.jpg


And at around 60% it stops and just gives me this:

HKTSuJt.png



I continued on researching and experimenting, until I found something about bootsectors, so I went into TestDisk and started the option "rebuild boot sector":

UabwGeg.jpg




After this had finished, I rebooted.
When clicking on the disk in My Computer, I now get this:

tGTOJIp.jpg









Sorry for the long post, and also apologies about the bad picture quality at some points.
I really need the data on the partition that had my data, I am not bothered about Ubuntu.

I have tried everything I am willing to do to be honest, and now think it is the time to ask my own question/post online.

Chkdsk just gives "Unable to determine volume version and state. Chkdsk aborted.".
When trying to check for errors using the built-in tool in My Computer, it replies with "The disk check could not be performed because Windows can't access the disk".




Any help would be greatly appreciated! And again, sorry for the long post!
 
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Hey, thanks for the quick reply :)

Do you mean this (highlighted in blue)? Because if so, I have already tried and it gives me this error (second picture).

PNKZtex.png


YlKYmQE.png

 
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Your hard drive is probably going real bad real quick. HOWEVER. I have seen these symptoms when the drive just needs to have the connections re-seated. One big Question is, does it give you different problems every time you reboot? I would check the connections FIRST! You could be causing more damage by running those programs on a limping hard drive. Another slim possibility is that your voltage going to the drive is not in spec. This can also cause an hard drive problems. Bad connections, over or undervolting will not always be an on off issue.
 
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Hey, to be totally honest just before this happened I had been using diskpart in cmd to do some stuff involving the SSD, but nothing should have touched the Hard drive.

What actually happened was I put in my Win7 disk and booted from that, going into the setup.

I then got to the stage of selecting a disk to install Windows, and the Hard drive WAS listed there.
I then went back to the beginning, used Shift-F10 to access CMD and used diskpart to format the SSD.

I know 100% that it was the SSD formatted, I made sure to double check beforehand.

It was at this point that the Hard Drive also disappeared off the list.




When I had finished reinstalling windows, that is where the first picture comes in (with that original error about a format being required).

I then played around with TestDisk, and rebuilt the boot sector. I now have the second error about the HDD being corrupt/unreadable.






However, I have had multiple reboots, and the error is always the same. The only time it has changed is, as above, when I used TestDisk.



So yes, this was likely caused by me being a complete idiot and possibly typing one letter wrong and "cleaning" the whole drive (clean is the command I used in DiskPart when targeting the SSD)



However, this also makes me think that, as it says on this site: http://www.paragon-software.com/home/rk-express/, I have simply done this:
"When simply deleting a partition (without additional wiping) disk management software only removes the references to it in the Partition Table, thus leaving the possibility to recover it later.", and all it requires is the filesystem to be repaired.


Sorry if this post is confusingly worded!
 
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Hey,

I think I must've "deleted" the paritions, or used the clean command in diskpart.

"The data on the HDD is not written over using the clean command like it does with the clean all command below. With the clean command, the data on the HDD is only marked as being deleted instead and is only written over when new data is written/saved to the same location on the HDD next."




No data has since been written over, nor have I used My Computer to format the drive....


I have used 2 programs since this started:

DiskTest
and
EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard (purely to scan for files)
 
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No, mainly because I am completely inexperienced with Ubuntu (I literally had installed it about 2 hours previous to this happening).

I have no idea whether it has any tools to be honest, but if there was a guide anywhere I would be willing to try it!



At the moment I am focusing on using windows to solve this; as I believe that it will simply be a case of finding a way to rebuild/re implement the file system



My theory is this:
The data IS still on there, intact etc., but I just need a way to reinstate the file system or whatever.
 
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It is hard to help on this forum because there are so many possibilities and things to check. First, Don't panic. Try to relate everything as clearly as you can to us. From what I have read so far I have these questions:
Does the Hard drive contain ALL of your operating system files? Boot files etc. Or are some of your system files also on the SSD?. If your operating system is completely on the hard disk, can you remove the SSD while you do these diagnostics? How far did you go exactly into the Windows disk when it was asking for install? These will help determine what you can do to fix it.
 
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Here is my story again, I will try and be as concise/simple as possible here, sorry for the spam haha:


My setup when this happened:


250GB SSD which contained the OS (Windows 7 Ultimate 64Bit) and all of my programs

1TB WD Hard Drive
This had been partitioned into two:
There was a 250GB Partition which had just Ubuntu on it, a fresh install, no other files.
And then the rest of the space was dedicated to my documents (photos, videos, word documents etc.).




This is the story, right from the beginning:


I wanted to reinstall the OS, as a nasty virus I had had left some leftovers (I think).
So I inserted my Windows 7 Installation disk and booted from it.

At the setup, I clicked next until I got to the section where I choose the target drive for installation.

There were 4 options:
The 250GB SSD
A 100MB SYSTEM RESERVED Partition on the SSD

The 250GB Partition on the hard drive, containing Ubuntu
and The other 600GB or so of the hard drive, containing all of my documents.



At this point, I went back right to the beginning of the setup process. I had not formatted/deleted anything at this stage.
I then pressed Shift-F10 to access a command prompt.

I then typed in "Diskpart" to access the diskpart commands.

I then, using this utility, selected the SSD, and typed in "Clean".
The clean command does this (from another site): "With the clean command, the data on the HDD is only marked as being deleted instead and is only written over when new data is written/saved to the same location on the HDD next."

Therefore, at this point, the SSD still actually had all of the old OS files on it.




I then went back to the disk selection stage, and noticed that the hard drive option had actually completely disappeared from the list. No Ubuntu partition, no documents partition. Nothing.

Now, what I had done in Diskpart should not have touched the Hard Drive at all, only the SSD.




Anyway, I continued on with the installation, ignoring this.
I installed windows to the SSD.




I then booted into this fresh install of Windows, which as I say was installed on the SSD, the Hard Drive should have still had my documents and Ubuntu on it.

However, I then went into my computer and saw a message telling me that I "need(ed) to format the disk in drive E before I (could) use it".

This is when I tried the above steps involving TestDisk.
 
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It looks like the fresh install of windows is not seeing the format on your hard drive. I have seen this happen when the AHCI setting in the BIOS is changed. But if you didn't actually change the bios or install a new drive it shouldn't be an issue. Have you tried booting the system without the hard drive installed? Do you have a different system that you can test the Hard Drive in? Is the ubuntu partition bootable? There are lots of variables here. It probably is an easy fix when we find the fix. Don't panic.
 
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I'm just doing another Analyze with TestDisk (for the first time since the error message changed to "The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable"). This is what has come up so far:

bYHc7D5.png



It seems to be working a little faster (usually it would be around 1% every 1.5 minutes, its got to 30% in about 5 minutes).
That first line, just above where it says "Invalid NTFS.... etc" has never come up before.

Maybe that's a good sign?




I have not changed the BIOS settings as far as I can remember, I'll reboot now though anyway and just double check; just to be sure.
The ubuntu partition is not bootable.
I do not have a different system to try this in, only a laptop.
I do not see the point in removing the HDD to be honest, I know it will boot up normally anyway as there are no OS files on it.
 
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TestDisk has now finished

WriVWTa.png




I don't even know what to think.... Last time I analyzed it it said that the hard drive seemed too small, and now it's saying it again....


However, it has never before said "Check HD jumpers settings" or "BIOS Detection"
 
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Repair An NTFS MFT

The MFT (Master File Table) is sometimes corrupted. If Microsoft's Checkdisk (chkdsk) failed to repair the MFT, run TestDisk. In the Advanced menu, select your NTFS partition, choose Boot, then Repair MFT. TestDisk will compare the MFT and MFT mirror (its backup). If the MFT is damaged, it will try to repair the MFT using the backup. If the MFT backup is damaged, it will use the main MFT.
If both MFT and MFTMirr are damaged and thus cannot be repaired using TestDisk, you might want to try commercial software like Zero Assumption Recovery, GetDataBack for NTFS or Restorer 2000.
 
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Hey,

Thanks for this. TestDisk says that the MFT and the MFT backup match "perfectly".


"MFT and MFT mirror match perfectly"....


I really don't know what to do now :/ I know that I can recover the files manually using file recovery tools, such as EaseUS's, but it would mean going through hundreds of old files that it finds to select the ones which I want to keep...
 
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DiskTest can't do anything, chkdsk doesn't work, and nor does anything else I've tried.


I'm now at the point where I'm just gonna give up. Tomorrow, after school, so at around 5pm, I will use EaseUS Data Recovery (I have downloaded the professional version from the internet) and recover my files that way.

It'll be a lot more of a painstaking process, if it even works at all, but I will post back here with results (hopefully by 6pm).


Thanks for all of your help :) and sorry to be such a time waster 🙁
 
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You may be closer to a solution with TestDisk than you think!

I was searching with Google for Ubuntu disk recovery tools and found a pretty good tutorial on drive partition recovery with TestDisk: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/15761/recover-data-like-a-forensics-expert-using-an-ubuntu-live-cd/

Give it a look and see if it may be helpful to you.

Yogi
 
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Hey, thanks for this.
I think I've kinda expired the usage that TestDisk will give me, whether in Ubuntu or Windows.
I managed to get the full version of EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard online, so I'll use that to recover at least some of the data that is on the drive (hopefully...).

Once that is backed up I will definitely try that method anyway though!

Thank you!
 
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Hey,

Just a quick update to say that I managed to scan and recover some files. There are 18,615 in total, the majority is just random rubbish though (eg Game music or corrupted files)...
I'm gonna have to sift through all of that which will be fun 😛
Anyway basically I'm trying to say I give up with trying to get a full recovery from this, and I will probably now start again and just format it (after going through all of those files).

Thank you both so much for all your help :) It's a real pain none of it worked haha, but at least I have got something back :)




PS:

I picked hans_pcguy as my solution, even though overall there never really was a fix, due to the fact that you have been helping me throughout the duration of me/us trying to find a solution.

I honestly really appreciate both of you helping me, and thanks again!! :)
 
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