Corrupted folders after clone

[T-Pane]

Hi guys

Dropped my laptop on the floor and HDD took some damage. (It was turned off)

Have been able to clone 91% to a different HDD and cloned that HDD to another HDD, using HDDSuperClone. Gave up on finishing it, as phase 4 seems to take 30-60 days.
It only contains old school notes and some pictures, but nothing that is worth paying for a professional. (Important stuff had backup)

Im mainly doing this, as i want the experience and it could be quite fun to recover the stuff myself.

Problem is that the /user/desktop and user/documents folders are corrupted. When i try to open them, i get the "folder is not accessible the file or directory is corrupted and unreadable" error.

- Why do i get this error?
- Is there a way to access the files in these folders, as i assume they must still be alive, since i cloned 91% of the HDD.

I vaguely remember something from years ago, like chkdsk or something, where the folder structure was corrupt and you could pull out the files anyway

Brgds

[mr44er]

Why do i get this error?

Have been able to clone 91% ...Gave up on finishing it, <-- because it is not complete. If you have for example 100 files and force finish @91% you can't assume that you have your 90 files, 91 or 90,5 files. You can't define or assume anything, or even rule out anything if you don't have a 100% image. Also: is 100% only the written area, all LBAs the disk (with empty ones) has or just the percentage what the clone software 'assumes'?
And even then with a 100% image you can't tell what to really get out of this image in the end...it also depends which filesystem was used and how this reacts with errors.

Is there a way to access the files in these folders, as i assume they must still be alive, since i cloned 91% of the HDD.

You don't know what the 9% contains, me neither. Directory/file structure A-Z is not just 0-100%.

Good advice: never force an early stop, if it makes any progress. Always expect that the disk dies completely during the first try and you never get a second chance.
I suggest you try a second clone run and wait to finish 100%, if you want the experience and the best possible chance to get your data. Then clone this disk on another (second) healthy disk and also make a third copy as an image file, keep them safe.
Then you can play safe with your first clone and try some things without regret. If this attempt fails and makes things worse, grab your clone#2 and clone it again to have a clean 'restart' base.
If you have windows and ntfs:

Code:

chkdsk /R

For other scanmodes or help:

Code:

chkdsk /?

Important: don't boot from that clone (you need exclusive access and otherwise it makes things worse), only access this disk from another booted operating system…

[sin]

Perhaps files not opening will depend on the integrity of FS and type of FS, actions of checkdisk before the disk crashed etc etc.

Try running RTT-Rstudio on your image. If you are finding your files in the folders to be corrupt or not opening. Then your chances lie with raw recovery.
Which means you will have to scan the whole image and recover files by type (xls pdf xlsx doc docx etc etc) and re sort your way out.

You will be surprised to see may files you deleted in the past show up if they are not over written.

If you get to this point then congrats now you know a few things about data recovery at the software recovery level

Cheers!
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[T-Pane]

Thanks for the replies! Already had somewhat knowledge from all the gold on this forum, so did already make a clone of my clone.

I stopped it as i didnt deem it worth running for upwards 60 days to finish. Still have the log, so might try and continue the cloning for a while longer and hope that the disk doesnt die before it finishes.

I ran a chkdsk on one of the clones and can see that most files are there, problem with chkdsk is that it messes up the entire directory, so i end up with 1000+ folders called dirxxxx.chk. This makes it super tedious to find the files.

@sin Thank you very much, i will try RTT-Rstudio on a fresh clone and see what that discovers. Will read a bit about raw recovery too!

Thanks again, i somehow find this super fun to do and it is probably good experience if i someday end up in the worst case scenario with important files. Also just good general knowledge to learn!

[Arch Stanton]

I vaguely remember something from years ago, like chkdsk or something

This is never a good idea if you're looking to recover the data.

[sin]

Welcome
Why fresh clone...
you can continue with the old clone

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[mr44er]

chkdsk may not be the best variant, but the rare cases where I needed to recover some halfdead disk with NTFS, it did the job well enough. But I can't compare, never had the need for important rescueing and pricey software. (more backup is always cheaper, that's the lesson I learnt with non-important data )

[fzabkar]

chkdsk may not be the best variant, but the rare cases where I needed to recover some halfdead disk with NTFS, it did the job well enough.

CHKDSK's primary aim is to restore consistency to the file system, and it will often sacrifice your files to achieve that end. CHKDSK is probably fine if you run it against a healthy drive in specific cases, eg if you have powered down the drive during a write operation. However, you must not run it against a drive affected by head/media faults, even in read-only mode.

[Amarbir[CDR-Labs]]

chkdsk may not be the best variant, but the rare cases where I needed to recover some halfdead disk with NTFS, it did the job well enough.

CHKDSK's primary aim is to restore consistency to the file system, and it will often sacrifice your files to achieve that end. CHKDSK is probably fine if you run it against a healthy drive in specific cases, eg if you have powered down the drive during a write operation. However, you must not run it against a drive affected by head/media faults, even in read-only mode.

+1 Observation ....

[Arch Stanton]

chkdsk may not be the best variant, but the rare cases where I needed to recover some halfdead disk with NTFS, it did the job well enough. But I can't compare, never had the need for important rescueing and pricey software. (more backup is always cheaper, that's the lesson I learnt with non-important data )

chkdsk is never a good idea where it concerns data recovery, period. some anekdote does not change this.

[Kennabytes]

When recovering data from a HDD it is always best to recover/copy the most important files/data as quick as possible. Damaged drives, especially those damaged by impact, will typically not improve with time.

Where possible, only clone drives that are healthy - cloning will also transfer corrupted files, settings and data e.g. file system, operation system, permissions.

[mr44er]

CHKDSK's primary aim is to restore consistency to the file system, and it will often sacrifice your files to achieve that end. CHKDSK is probably fine if you run it against a healthy drive in specific cases, eg if you have powered down the drive during a write operation.

Oh ok, I understand. That was info I didn't knew nor expect.

chkdsk is never a good idea where it concerns data recovery, period. some anekdote does not change this.

Yeah, I can see that now. To be honest my last experience with this was on win7, but I guess it's the same on 11.
Anyway, experience gained.

[T-Pane]

Yea i tried chkdsk on one of the clones, that was pretty useless.

Used RTT-Rstudio on a new clone, and that was able to get by the corrupted folder and recover the files. A few was corrupted, probably due to the missing 9%.

Thanks a lot for the help all!

[sin]

Hello
Good to know.
You can trace out the defunct files. You can note down their sizes and then try to find them in the RAW marked results...

Let us know how it goes.

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[T-Pane]

So i left it running for 15 days extra, and is currently at the trimming face.

93% recovered
7% non-trimmed

It says it will take 500 days to finish from here. How accurate is this?

Anything i can do to recover (speed up) some of the last stuff with HDDSuperClone? Or is the timer just inaccurate? Seems like it currently recovers decently fast.