How To Recover TXT File that Will Not Open or Copy, Input/Output Error

Hello.

I have a few TXT files which no longer open. This problem has occurred from time to time on one TXT file while the other TXT files that I had been using still work. Perhaps there was an error when saving but I am not sure. Perhaps there is a problem finding or recognizing EOF or some similar issue.

I tried the "cp" command and one file copied the beginning of the file (many lines) but not the rest, while another file did not copy at all.

I have seen references to using "dd" but I have not seen any explanation of how to locate the file's physical location, so that I might do some kind of quick copy.

The TXT files might be large for a TXT file, sometimes maybe more than 1MB, but tiny compared to a multi-GB storage drive.

My past experience includes using the command line, using a hex editor, and compiling programs--but I am rusty.

Thank you.

What happens if you run:

cat file.txt > newfile.txt

(assuming newfile.txt is not already a file)

Have you tried repairing the disk with fsck?

dd works on files. Have you tried

dd if=file.txt of=newfile.txt

?

Try a binary editor? (hex)

Command line I think might work to see if the file is correct format. https://linux.die.net/man/1/file

Could be some botched locations or some file that needs to be checked.

So you have a history of broken files, but it wasn't worth your time to create backups. But it's worth faffing around trying to recover them.
Interesting attitude.

What do the log files say ?. Are these files on removable media (USB say) ?.

Example:

#!/usr/bin/bash

read -p "Enter/Paste file for hex view: " hv

od -A x -t x1z -v "$hv" | less

Originally Posted by syg00 So you have a history of broken files, but it wasn't worth your time to create backups.

I had a file that I rarely consulted so that when it got corrupted the corrupted version propagated through all my backups.

If this is a text file, corruption may be non-text. 'strings' will extract text from mixed.

What does this show ?

ls -l FILENAME

maybe you lack read access, see man(1) ls and man chmod(1)