Windows cannot recover master file table (TrueCrypt)

[Mackan2009]

Hello!

I bought a new HD a few weeks ago. I partioned it in Windows Vista x64 to one big partition (1000 GB). Then I used TrueCrypt to encrypt the volume. Worked fine, but earlier today Windows was acting weird, the mouse started to freeze at random, so I turned off the computer using Start>Shut Down (I did not force the power off). Then I moved the disk to a Windows Server 2003 x86 server where it should be, I mounted the disk fine. But when I double click it in "My Computer" I get:

"E:\ is not accessible
The disk structure is corrupted and unreadable."

The disk listed in "My Computer" has "Local Disk (E:)" as volume label, and it is blank under "Total Size" and "Free Space".

I tried bringing it back to Vista, where I can't even access it or get the error message. If I start cmd and type "e:" to change to the disk it just waits forever and nothing happens. If I go to "My Computer" in Vista the Window stops responding and show nothing. The mouse started freezing at random also, something that it does not do when I don't have the disk plugged into Vista (without the disk plugged in I can also access My Computer).

So I moved the disk back to Windows Server 2003, made a backup of the volume header and then mounted it and clicked on "Repair Filesystem" from TrueCrypt. Also later tried running "chkdsk e: /F" from cmd. This is what I got from both those cases:

"The type of the file system is NTFS.
Volume label is STORAGE.
Corrupt master file table. Windows will attempt to recover master file table from disk.

Windows cannot recover master file table. CHKDSK aborted."

What do I do now? The files are critical on the disk, and the only reason they AREN'T backed up is because I've had problems with the server and had to use the disk on vista.

I found this:

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Recover_ ... filesystem

It's a small tutorial of how to fix the problem I'm having with an application named "TestDisk", however when I ran it I became unsure of what to actually select. First of all the interface isn't that great, it's DOS-like. Second, the tutorial says "None" should be selected for partition type, but a note inside the programs says "Do NOT select 'None' for media with only one partition. It's very rare for a drive to be 'Non-partitioned'." My HD has one partition, and I have encrypted that partition with TrueCrypt, so I shouldn't select "None"? Maybe the tutorial on the wiki was written for when you encrypt the disk without any partition? Has anybody used TestDisk before and know what I should do?

Please help, I swear to God I will be a better person if you see me through this. If the content of the drive is lost an entire months work is gone by a lot of people (many man-hours).

If you have any questions what-so ever, maybe I have been unclear, please let me know. Thank you for your time!

[xsoliman]

Is this a data drive or also the system boot drive ?

If its a data drive you must use it in the system where TrueCrypt is installed
so it can do its on-the-fly encryption/decryption to the raw sectors on the drive

Sounds like you did in the 5th paragraph above where some TrueCrypt utility is able to identify the disk and exposes it as E:
If your lucky its just the ntfs structures on E: that are corrupt
Looks like chkdsk reads the volume label ok, which is encouraging as it shows the truecrypt on-the-fly decyption is probably working
However the fact that chkdsk is having problems with the MFT is not so good

[xsoliman]

And try some scanning tool like Restorer2000 to see if it can detect any folders and files on e:

[Mackan2009]

Hello, thanks for your replys!

I tried to scan the disk with "R-Studio" and got a bunch of Cyclic Redundancy Check errors, which is leading me to believe that the disk itself is broken somehow. So what I need now is some kind of tool that makes an image of the disk and skips faults like CRC errors, then I might be able to mount that image in TrueCrypt and recover some files. Anyone have knowledge of such a program? Or thoughts on something else I should try?

[Mackan2009]

Guess I'll have to restore the old backup. Thanks any way xsoliman.

[drc]

You can use r-studio to make an image of the disk, though if the whole thing is encrypted I don't know how well that will survive having small pieces missing...

[Mackan2009]

R.I.P Hard Drive

I scanned the disk using GetDataBack, got a bunch of errors about that it could not be read sometimes, but you could continue. It found around 200000 "file starts" (I think it was) so it seemed promising. Six hours later it was done and showed... no results. Well that didn't work, I thought and started TrueCrypt to format the drive. But the drive was not mounted anylonger. Nor could I mount it, it wasn't in the list. Windows' "Disk Management" gave no trace of the disk neither. It was gone.

Rebooted and after a little while extra time it said "IDE Channel 2 Master : " and nothing more. Usually it says "None" if nothing is plugged in on that channel but here it said "". It found something but couldn't decide what the heck it is.

I'll have to send this disk back, shouldn't be this way after only a couple of weeks.

The end.

[BlackST]

Just for a matter of statistics, as you didn't post it, what was the exact type/model of the drive and where did you buy it ? Was by chance a refurbished drive (factory refurbished) ? (like Seagate with green lined label, or Maxtor drives with "REFURBISHED TO MAXTOR SPECIFICATIONS" on top label) . If don't want to post it in public, PM me.

Note : seems a case of "infant mortality"...

[Mackan2009]

The HDD was: WESTERN DIGITAL CAVIAR GREEN 1TB SATA/300 32MB
http://images.google.com/images?q=WESTE ... R+GREEN+TB

Don't want to say where I bought it since I don't think it was their fault.