hi all,
I'm using a USB hard drive (250gb, WD SATA),
Up to today everything worked fine, but today NTFS stopped mounting.
No system updates applied in the last month

root@dim-laptop:/home/dim# uname -a
Linux dim-laptop 2.6.22-14-generic #1 SMP Fri Feb 1 04:59:50 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux


root@dim-laptop:/home/dim# fdisk -l
...
Disk /dev/sdc: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x9c879c87

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdc1 * 1 30400 244187968+ 7 HPFS/NTFS


root@dim-laptop:/home/dim# mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdc1 /usbdisk
Record 6 has no FILE magic: Input/output error
Failed to open inode: Input/output error
Failed to mount '/dev/sdc1': Input/output error
NTFS is either inconsistent, or you have hardware faults, or you have 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 you have SoftRAID/FakeRAID then first you must activate
it and mount a different device under the /dev/mapper/ directory, (e.g.
/dev/mapper/nvidia_eahaabcc1). Please see the 'dmraid' documentation
for the details.


root@dim-laptop:/home/dim# ntfsmount /dev/sdc1 /usbdisk
Failed to open inode : Input/output error
Couldn't mount device '/dev/sdc1' : Input/output error
Mount failed.

/var/log/messages: when plugging the disk in
Feb 18 18:14:20 dim-laptop kernel: [ 1315.048000] usb 5-7: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 6
Feb 18 18:14:20 dim-laptop kernel: [ 1315.188000] usb 5-7: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
Feb 18 18:14:20 dim-laptop kernel: [ 1315.188000] scsi4 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
Feb 18 18:14:25 dim-laptop kernel: [ 1320.188000] scsi 4:0:0:0: Direct-Access WDC WD25 WD-WCANK207 10.0 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2 CCS
Feb 18 18:14:25 dim-laptop kernel: [ 1320.192000] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdc] 488397168 512-byte hardware sectors (250059 MB)
Feb 18 18:14:25 dim-laptop kernel: [ 1320.192000] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdc] Write Protect is off
Feb 18 18:14:25 dim-laptop kernel: [ 1320.196000] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdc] 488397168 512-byte hardware sectors (250059 MB)
Feb 18 18:14:25 dim-laptop kernel: [ 1320.200000] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdc] Write Protect is off
Feb 18 18:14:25 dim-laptop kernel: [ 1320.200000] sdc: sdc1
Feb 18 18:14:25 dim-laptop kernel: [ 1320.204000] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdc] Attached SCSI disk
Feb 18 18:14:25 dim-laptop kernel: [ 1320.204000] sd 4:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0


root@dim-laptop:/home/dim# ntfsfix /dev/sdc1
Mounting volume... Failed to open inode : Input/output error
FAILED
Attempting to correct errors...
Processing $MFT and $MFTMirr...
Reading $MFT... OK
Reading $MFTMirr... OK
Comparing $MFTMirr to $MFT... OK
Processing of $MFT and $MFTMirr completed successfully.
Setting required flags on partition... OK
Going to empty the journal ($LogFile)... OK
Failed to open inode : Input/output error
Remount failed : Input/output error


pls help me find a way to get to the data on the disk without having to install windows

You can try using testdisk.

If you need to recover data from the disk, you can try using photorec or foremost.

thanks for the reply mate, apt-getting testdisk right now

I am a bit reluctant to use testdisk on that drive, lots of important info there. are you aware of any other NTFS repairing tools maybe?

I was having such problems before my disk died (bad sectors, CRC errors, DMA resets, etc).

I'm not aware of any other programs, though I guess you could try fsck. The linux-ntfs.org site says you can try Obviously you want to change /dev/hdXY to /dev/sdc1.

it has been confirmed - these are bad sectors
I opened this topic at the ntfs-3g forum and they were very quick to diagnose my hdd.

thanks guys, this thread can be closed