Hey

Here is my/my HDD story:
I have 5 years old 1TB WD My Passport External HDD. I was using it mostly with my windows Tab which had only micro usb port, so I had to use special OTG cable with additional slot for power to use it with my tab, and those OTG cables quickly went failing, firstly loose connection and then stopping to work. Many times the HDD disconnected by itself during work and finally I think some important section get damage or something because it stopped working today giving some interesting symptoms:
- When connected to Windows devices, it almost freezes the windows and the disk is trying to read something all the time.
- After few minutes Windows gives a message that the partition can't be opened and the HDD needs formating. The HDD read LED diode is still all the time blinking and windows still tries to do something.
- In DMDE I was able to open the HDD quite quickly and see all my files, however test copy of some file was taking ages (I guess it was something like 100 kb/s)
- in Linux the partition won't mount and system gives a message that there was some unknown error. When trying to mount in my linux mint "disks" program, it gives' the msg- "[...]unknown error while mounting. udisk-error-quark, 0"
- Gparted info option gives such an info:
$MFTMirr does not match $MFT (record 0).
Failed to mount '/dev/sdb1': Input/output error
NTFS is inconsistent. Run chkdsk /f on Windows then reboot it TWICE!
The usage of the /f parameter is very IMPORTANT! No modification was
made to NTFS by this software.

Failed to open '/dev/sdb1'.

$MFTMirr does not match $MFT (record 0).
Failed to mount '/dev/sdb1': Input/output error
NTFS is inconsistent. Run chkdsk /f on Windows then reboot it TWICE!
The usage of the /f parameter is very IMPORTANT! No modification was
made to NTFS by this software.

Unable to read the contents of this file system!
Because of this some operations may be unavailable.
The cause might be a missing software package.
The following list of software packages is required for ntfs file system support: ntfs-3g / ntfsprogs.

- The option for benchmark and diagnosis in linux mint "disks" is not available.
- The option "repair" in gparted is available

I am writing this mainly because I know I have few options like runing chkdsk /f on windows, etc. but I want to make sure what could be the best to do in my case and in what order - in order not to loose my files. Because if I would know for example that there are some risky steps, I could devote few days to just copy the most important files with that lighting speed that I have now.
Thanks

Don't use CHKDSK on a failing HDD. Instead clone it with ddrescue or HDDSuperClone.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Or even better - The funny thing is, I got access to mac PC and I connected the HDD to it out of curiosity and it magically worked and with normal speed. The only problem is that it was write protected, but still it made me wonder what is going on here.