how to repair external USB harddisk formatted as ntfs
 

Sir recently I have bought external USB harddisk of size one TB and it was previously formatted as ntfs.I have made all my backup of size 750GB. I am unable to read from this drive on windows8 and I am able to read from this drive on opensuse12.2 OS. I have tried a lot to make this harddisk working like running chkdsk in elevated mode, using partition recovery tools etc., but none worked.

Are there any tools or softwares in Linux to fix this problem without losing of data.


Regards,
Rupesh.

Can you still read it in opensuse? If so, then the data is safe.

When you say "it was previously formatted as ntfs", are you saying that it is no longer formatted as ntfs? If so, what filesystem is it formatted as now?

If you can read the partition from your Linux system, you can always copy all content to a local harddisk and then re-format the partition, in case there was something wrong with the partition.

You might wanna try "ntfsfix /dev/sdXN" to force Windows to do a full file system check next time you boot into Windows.

Maybe you should still backup the files from that partition before you proceed with any action that might apply changes to the fs which could result in some kind of data loss.

It sounds like its been re-formatted using a Linux filesystem like ext3 or ext4.
Mount it on Suse and run
If you can read it from Suse, do NOT try to 'fix' it.
If it is using a Linux fs, then MS will not be able to read it without the proper driver (not std on MS).

My above post was referring to ntfsfix which will do nothing but marking an NTFS file system as "dirty", so Windows will do a file system check during boot.

If the partition is not NTFS, ntfsfix will spew a few error messages but eventually abort without any action taken.

Sir when I buy it I have checked filesystem type it was ntfs and now also when I run the command fdisk -l it is showing filesystem type as ntfs. I have done chkdsk in Windows8 elevated mode still I am unable to access the drive on Windows8 but I am able to access it on suse.

I can't copy all the 750GB to other because I don't have space so please suggest how to make it readable from Windows OS`s.

fdisk -l only shows the partition type, but not which filesystem it really contains. The partition type is a numeric id that is added to the partition. fdisk is reading this and displays it in the output.

I suggest to run the "blkid" command (as root) in a shell which will output the eventual name of the filesystem ("TYPE=xxxx"), amongst other infos. It will tell if the file system really is ntfs, or something different.

If the file system is not ntfs, you will have no other option than to borrow a harddisk so you can backup all files before you change the filesystem, i.e., use mkntfs to format the partition with ntfs, or use Windows8 for that task.

If you need to, you can burn those files onto a DVD or a couple CDs.

Did you do anything else?
Did you simply copy files to the drive or did you tinker with the drive first?
Did the drive work with Windows before you put your files on it?

750 GB onto "a" DVD? That's at least 160 DVDs (or "a couple" of 1072 CDs)..

copy/paste your results from df -Th from your Linux with that external HDD plugged in and mounted. that will help us help you further.

If it is ext2/3 there are some tools that you can install on the windows computer to gain access to the data, but if it truly is formatted NTFS and windows can not read it, sorry then windows is just being windows and there will not be much you can do.

If you try to read a Windows disk that was not a disk on your current computer, there may be a problem with "ownership". You may be able to have Windows take ownership of the filesystem on the disk, depending on what version of 8 you are running. Linux can read it because fuse ignores many of the file permissions.

In your Windows file manager, right click on the drive, and look for "security". If your version of Windows has that feature, you can find the permissions and ownership information and change it.

:doh:
I saw GB and thought MB. My bad. Ignore me and carry on.

But given the OP's posting history both here and at DebianForumNet, asking exactly what he has done was the main purpose of the post. Was anything done to the drive before or after storing every package in the repositories on it?

try testdisk program

I am providing the output of blkid below
linux-k4gi:~ # blkid /dev/sdc1
/dev/sdc1: LABEL="Elements" UUID="1ADC8962DC893951" TYPE="ntfs"
linux-k4gi:~ #

I am providing the output of fdisk -l below
linux-k4gi:~ # fdisk -l /dev/sdc

Disk /dev/sdc: 1000.2 GB, 1000202043392 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121600 cylinders, total 1953519616 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0002846e

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdc1 * 2048 1953519615 976758784 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
linux-k4gi:~ #

I am providing the output of df -Th below
linux-k4gi:~ # df -Th
Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
rootfs rootfs 217G 121G 96G 56% /
devtmpfs devtmpfs 3.7G 60K 3.7G 1% /dev
tmpfs tmpfs 3.7G 1.0M 3.7G 1% /dev/shm
tmpfs tmpfs 3.7G 760K 3.7G 1% /run
/dev/sdb9 ext3 217G 121G 96G 56% /
/dev/sdb8 ext3 20G 173M 19G 1% /home
tmpfs tmpfs 3.7G 760K 3.7G 1% /var/lock
tmpfs tmpfs 3.7G 760K 3.7G 1% /var/run
tmpfs tmpfs 3.7G 0 3.7G 0% /media
/dev/sdc1 fuseblk 932G 702G 230G 76% /run/media/root/Elements
/dev/sr0 iso9660 4.4G 4.4G 0 100% /run/media/root/openSUSE-DVD-x86_640167
linux-k4gi:~ #

On examining suggest what to do now.

All i can say is that blkid returned "ntfs", this means that it really is NTFS and not some other partition type that Windows couldn't mount. It also shows a Windows/ntfs uuid (shorter than Linux/ext uuids).

This is strange. Frankly, i got no more ideas right now, as Windows *should* be able to see and mount the partition, i.e., it should be automatically available as one of the "drive letters" (ala E:, F: or something).

I pass..

In Windows, did you check the ownership of the disk and / or the file system in Windows Explorer? Windows honors Windows file permissions. Linux does not. If it is a Windows system disk from another computer or has strict file permissions, your Windows will honor those permissions and you will not have access. If that is the case, you have to change the permissions or ownership as an admin.

yesterday I have taken it to servicing centre there the technician done virus scan and all the data appeared in his system and again when I take to my home and try to connect it same problem is appearing. I have tried to mount it in a newly formatted OS and there is no use.

Looks there is a problem with your machine, either a faulty USB port or cable, or a corrupt system.

Did you try using another USB cable as one member suggested? Also it might be Windows does not recognize your external drive electronics. Does the icon that shows the existence of an external drive appear in the system tray when you attach the drive? Do you have another external enclosure of a different brand you could try?

solved my issue with lot of struggle and posting how I did it
 

At first I have tried stellar phoneix data recovery software in windows which has taken approximately 12 hours just to scan the drive to recover and asking some more time to store the data to another temporary disk. Then I thought better to use dolphin browser to copy data to temporary disk and the process has taken three days due to frequent power failures.Then I have ran the command ddrescue command and the process has taken 18 hours.

Here I have used another external harddisk of size 1TB to data recovery.

What I have learned from this is that while working with linux we have to properly shutdown the system otherwise the situations may be disastrous.Actually the problem started due to improper shutdown of linux.Previously improper shutdown has been occured many times while operating windows OS but I have never encountered such a problem.


A note about dolphin or nautilus browsers.

Actually details about my data on source disk are 750GB,184000 folders,1008400 files.
When I first tried to copy data to some destination disk approximately it has taken two hours just to create directories then power failure occured and so I have resarted the copy process and again it has taken 1.5 hours just to parse directories. I think that file copying of large volumes of data in linux is very slow.


Regards,

Rupesh.

Yeah, it's gonna be slow. Not just in linux. You're dealing with 750gb over USB. I wish you the best of luck, and a lot of patience.