A friend of mine panicked when her laptop died, just as she was about to upload a larger school assignment. So I look at the laptop, it has a disk read error and is unable to start. I take the laptop apart, and connected it's NTFS HDD to my own laptop.

There was a windows prompt claiming I didn't have access rights to the files, so being administrator on my own PC I granted those rights to myself. Windows processed the command, and I was able to open the drive, browse around, find the file and copy it to my own laptop. Literally moments after, the hdd dies once again, appearing greyed out. As a small victory, she was able to upload it before the deadline, and I was left with a drive she still wanted to get her other stuff from, personal photos and other school notes being the most important ones.


The past while I've been trying to use testdisk and photorec to attempt to recover the files. Testdisk was able to find the drive, browse through the files, select them for copying. The transfer of the files to my own computer, however failed for most of the files. Immediately after that the Hdd seemed to unmount itself. Testdisk could still locate and access it but claimed now that the file system had been corrupted, and couldn't list anything. I have tried testdisk once before, but I started the recovery (hoping I could recover everything) and left the pc to work overnight. The following day testdisk had at least attempted, copying folder structure and some very uninteresting junk files, but almost all the good things had failed. There were also a windows prompt asking if I wanted to format the drive before I could use it. Evidence that it had unmounted, at least briefly.

I suspect that there's something seriously wrong with NTFS permissions. I'm also suspecting the usb/Sata peripherals I'm using is a little wonky causing it to disconnect from the PC. I have been using it before without any issues on other sata drives.


So I'm stuck, I've got no idea what to do, or what to try. I have a budget of exactly nothing, so any software needed has to be free, or failing that, very cheap. I also don't want to keep taking aimless cracks at it incase I make the issues worse.

I'll greatly appreciate any form of advice or assistance as well as time spent reading this.

Thanks in advance.
Anders.

I am leaning towards internal issues such as weak head or head damage. NTFS permissions is a long shot in my opinion. Best option is take to a DR lab as software is going to keep trying to access the drive and continue to cause damage. I understand that you don't want to spend money, but the problem is that having a $0 budget does not mean there is a $0 fix available. The DR Lab will likely need to change heads or some such with a donor drive, and these cost.

What is the model number of the HDD?

IMHO your only DIY opportunity would be to clone your drive, sector by sector, using a tool that understands how to work around bad media (eg ddrescue) and then run data recovery software against the clone.

Ddrescue can perform multipass cloning. It clones the easy sectors on the first pass, and attempts the more difficult ones on subsequent passes. It can also clone your drive in reverse, thereby disabling lookahead caching. It keeps a log, allowing it to resume after an interruption.

http://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/ddrescue.html

Ubuntu Rescue Remix:
http://ubuntu-rescue-remix.org/

Install Ubuntu Rescue Remix to a Flash Drive:
http://www.pendrivelinux.com/install-ub ... ash-drive/

Clone a failing Windows hard disk with ddrescue on Ubuntu Rescue Remix:
http://keystoneisit.blogspot.com/2011/0 ... -with.html

Sometimes there is a DIY "helper" solution for drives that go offline during cloning, but this depends on the model.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Rescue Remix isn't too old?

No one is updating it anymore?

I'm trying Rescue Remix. Does exist some frontend/GUI for it?

His functions are only over command line?

Ddrescue is constantly under development. You could always copy the latest version to your bootable flash drive.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

I've downloaded the latest ddrescue from here. That's just a 68 KB ddrescue-1.19.tar.lz?

How could I update the Ubuntu Rescue Remix ISO with the latest DDRescue?

Inside the ISO image we have the following:

\
<.disk> <DIR>
<casper> <DIR>
<install> <DIR>
<isolinux> <DIR>
ubuntu 0 B
README.diskdefines 237 B
md5sum.txt 949 B

\.disk\ (4) 95 B 2012-04-26 10:11
base_installable 0 B
cd_type 15 B
info 50 B
release_notes_url 30 B

\casper\ (5) 232 MB 2012-04-26 10:22
vmlinuz 5 MB
initrd.gz 16 MB
filesystem.manifest 10 KB
filesystem.manifest-desktop 10 KB
filesystem.squashfs 211 MB

\install\ (2) 533 KB 2012-04-26 10:11
memtest 173 KB
sbm.img 360 KB

\isolinux\ (5) 37 KB 2012-04-26 12:41
isolinux.bin 24 KB
boot.cat 2 KB
isolinux.cfg 981 B
splash.rle 9 KB
isolinux.txt 438 B

Hello fzabkar,

How update it on the ISO? Contents are as follows:

Name Size Date
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
f:\ (3) 244 161 097 -----
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
<.disk> <DIR> 2012-04-26
<casper> <DIR> 2012-04-26
<install> <DIR> 2012-04-26
<isolinux> <DIR> 2012-04-26
ubuntu 0 2011-10-12
README.diskdefines 237 2012-04-26
md5sum.txt 949 2012-04-26
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
f:\.disk\ (4) 95 2012-04-26 10:11 r----
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
base_installable 0 2011-10-12
cd_type 15 2011-10-12
info 50 2012-04-26
release_notes_url 30 2011-10-12
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
f:\casper\ (5) 243 576 708 2012-04-26 10:22 r----
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
vmlinuz 4 864 480 2012-04-10
initrd.gz 16 982 744 2012-04-25
filesystem.manifest 10 636 2012-04-26
filesystem.manifest-desktop 10 560 2012-04-26
filesystem.squashfs 221 708 288 2012-04-26
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
f:\install\ (2) 545 404 2012-04-26 10:11 r----
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
memtest 176 764 2011-05-02
sbm.img 368 640 2010-04-12
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
f:\isolinux\ (5) 37 704 2012-04-26 12:41 r----
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
isolinux.bin 24 576 2012-04-26
boot.cat 2 048 2012-04-26
isolinux.cfg 981 2012-04-26
splash.rle 9 661 2011-10-12
isolinux.txt 438 2012-04-26