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My SSD holding Windows crashed and I am currently stuck trying to recover the data from my 750GB HDD. I am using GParted to do this, and the drive with all my important data on it is not mounting. Here's a screenshot of the screen and error:

enter image description here

I'm no expert, but it looks to me like I might have a major problem with this data recovery. Any suggestions are appreciated.

karel
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Trent C
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2 Answers2

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  1. install ntfs-3g if that is not already on your system

  2. try again gparted

  3. if it fails again with the same error: get yourself a windows rescue boot CD one of these will do: http://www.pcc-services.com/windows/guide-noboot2.html

  4. boot with it and follow the instructions

  5. if that is done, boot windows and run chkdsk /f

  6. reboot two times

thom
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  • So, basically what the error says :). Lol, thanks for the fast reply, I'll get on that when I get home. – Trent C Nov 05 '13 at 01:00
  • yes :-) I thought you might like this guided tour but if you want to go another route you can do this instead: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/fix-corrupted-windows-ntfs-filesystem-ubuntu/ but I doubt it will work in your case – thom Nov 05 '13 at 01:05
  • Yeah, btw, I basically lost my windows file in the crash, although I have a backup from Friday, I can't boot from it as it is on an external drive. Point is, will the rescue boot allow me to access the files? – Trent C Nov 05 '13 at 01:29
  • So it is NOT your windows boot device ? Well, at least you can forget about point 4, 5 and 6 then ;-) Nevertheless, it will fix your filesystem if that is physically possible, and regarding the info you shared I have good hope :-) – thom Nov 05 '13 at 02:12
  • No, the computer itself was my windows machine, but not anymore. This event is the push towards Linux for me. After I get my data, I am going to install either Ubuntu or Mint. I work part time in the web design field, so I'm gonna just run a copy of windows 7 with dream weaver from a virtual box. – Trent C Nov 05 '13 at 02:50
  • dream weaver runs perfectly under "wine" (a compatibility layer, not an emulator or VM) there is even a preset for dream weaver in "winetricks". You don't even need a virtualbox :-) – thom Nov 05 '13 at 02:55
  • So, a little more clarification if possible. By SSD crash, I mean that I no longer have a working copy of windows, so will chkdsk /f work on the windows recovery cd command line? – Trent C Nov 05 '13 at 14:46
  • Quite possibly yes – thom Nov 05 '13 at 14:50
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What gparted is trying to communicate is that the boot parameter block and volume boot record were corrupted and illegible\unreadable. Like a corrupt file header. In that block is the pointer to the $MFT (Master File Table) similar to Superblock in Linux. Somehow the partition got shifted leading to the offset and loss of magic number. Good news is that there is a backup of the bpb\vbr at the end of the ntfs partition ... Total number of sectors -1 there could be an issue as to whether it is at the end of user data or formatted space. Nevertheless it is there and has the location of your $MFT which will get you your data back. So invoke gnu ddrescue and run it in reverse to image the backup boot sector. Then image the whole drive extract $MFT and use Johann Schnicht's "RawCopy" to do a low level extraction of data from Master File Table.

David Dunkelheit
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