Question

5

Recover files from NTFS drive with bad sectors

rated 0 times [ 5] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 20840 / 2 Years ago, sat, may 14, 2022, 9:50:20

A few nights ago I have created a backup of my data on an external 500 GB NTFS USB hard drive.
I have then formatted my computer, reinstalled Ubuntu and started transferring back the data from the external HDD.

Unfortunately some files have became corrupted and Ubuntu is unable to copy them over. The same issue happens if I login using Windows 7.

Disk Utility detects with SMART that there are "a few bad sectors".

Some of files are perfectly intact, but other files cannot be accessed (nor read, copied...) although they are displayed within nautilus and show the correct file size.

Is there anything I can do to recover this data? I have thought of using TestDisk but this utility seems more useful for repairing lost partitions or deleted files.

I have also thought of using ddrescue so I could at least have a low level copy of the disk but I am not sure what use to make of it in order to recover the data!!!

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ingwhin

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Member since Tue, Apr 26, 2022

2 Years ago

answered 2 Years ago untroo · Accepted Answer

Problem solved! I know this is not related to Ubuntu but I think this could be useful for other people.

I have found out that Window's chkdsk could solve the problem, this is because Ubuntu doesn't support NTFS as well as Windows does. It has taken several hours/days to run the tasks (just Windows scandisk with all options activated) but in the end I have managed to recover 99.98% of the data.