I replaced a buggy Windows Vista installation with Ubuntu. All works fine except that the main HD where I had all my files are now inaccessible. Here is the error message I get:

Error mounting: mount exited with exit code 13: ntfs_attr_pread_i: ntfs_pread failed: Input/output error

Failed to read NTFS $Bitmap: Input/output error

NTFS is either inconsistent, or there is a hardware fault, or it's a

SoftRAID/FakeRAID hardware. In the first case run chkdsk /f on Windows

then reboot into Windows twice. The usage of the /f parameter is very

important! If the device is a SoftRAID/FakeRAID then first activate

it and mount a different device under the /dev/mapper/ directory, (e.g.

/dev/mapper/nvidia_eahaabcc1). Please see the 'dmraid' documentation

for more details

Is it necessarily a hardware problem? If not, is there a way to repair the HD from Ubuntu?