hi all,
I'm using a USB hard drive (250gb, WD SATA),
Up to today everything worked fine, but today NTFS stopped mounting.
No system updates applied in the last month

root@dim-laptop:/home/dim# uname -a
Linux dim-laptop 2.6.22-14-generic #1 SMP Fri Feb 1 04:59:50 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux


root@dim-laptop:/home/dim# fdisk -l
...
Disk /dev/sdc: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x9c879c87

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdc1 * 1 30400 244187968+ 7 HPFS/NTFS


root@dim-laptop:/home/dim# mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdc1 /usbdisk
Record 6 has no FILE magic: Input/output error
Failed to open inode: Input/output error
Failed to mount '/dev/sdc1': Input/output error
NTFS is either inconsistent, or you have hardware faults, or you have a
SoftRAID/FakeRAID hardware. In the first case run chkdsk /f on Windows
then reboot into Windows TWICE. The usage of the /f parameter is very
important! If you have SoftRAID/FakeRAID then first you must activate
it and mount a different device under the /dev/mapper/ directory, (e.g.
/dev/mapper/nvidia_eahaabcc1). Please see the 'dmraid' documentation
for the details.


root@dim-laptop:/home/dim# ntfsmount /dev/sdc1 /usbdisk
Failed to open inode : Input/output error
Couldn't mount device '/dev/sdc1' : Input/output error
Mount failed.

/var/log/messages: when plugging the disk in
Feb 18 18:14:20 dim-laptop kernel: [ 1315.048000] usb 5-7: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 6
Feb 18 18:14:20 dim-laptop kernel: [ 1315.188000] usb 5-7: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
Feb 18 18:14:20 dim-laptop kernel: [ 1315.188000] scsi4 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
Feb 18 18:14:25 dim-laptop kernel: [ 1320.188000] scsi 4:0:0:0: Direct-Access WDC WD25 WD-WCANK207 10.0 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2 CCS
Feb 18 18:14:25 dim-laptop kernel: [ 1320.192000] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdc] 488397168 512-byte hardware sectors (250059 MB)
Feb 18 18:14:25 dim-laptop kernel: [ 1320.192000] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdc] Write Protect is off
Feb 18 18:14:25 dim-laptop kernel: [ 1320.196000] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdc] 488397168 512-byte hardware sectors (250059 MB)
Feb 18 18:14:25 dim-laptop kernel: [ 1320.200000] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdc] Write Protect is off
Feb 18 18:14:25 dim-laptop kernel: [ 1320.200000] sdc: sdc1
Feb 18 18:14:25 dim-laptop kernel: [ 1320.204000] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdc] Attached SCSI disk
Feb 18 18:14:25 dim-laptop kernel: [ 1320.204000] sd 4:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0


root@dim-laptop:/home/dim# ntfsfix /dev/sdc1
Mounting volume... Failed to open inode : Input/output error
FAILED
Attempting to correct errors...
Processing $MFT and $MFTMirr...
Reading $MFT... OK
Reading $MFTMirr... OK
Comparing $MFTMirr to $MFT... OK
Processing of $MFT and $MFTMirr completed successfully.
Setting required flags on partition... OK
Going to empty the journal ($LogFile)... OK
Failed to open inode : Input/output error
Remount failed : Input/output error


pls help me find a way to get to the data on the disk without having to install windows in order to run chkdsk

ntfs-3g 1.913 - Third Generation NTFS Driver

this is the version, I presume

Your driver is too old: http://ntfs-3g.org/releases.html

this is the latest version in ubuntu repos. is it certain that my drive stopped working due to an out of date version? because I really don't want to install something that doesn't come from the official repositories

Yes, the Ubuntu repos include an obsolete, unsafe, slow and function limited version of NTFS-3G.

But your problem seems to be that your disk is dying (bad sectors). Chkdsk and newer version of NTFS-3G could confirm this.

well, I build ntfs-3g from source, here's the output:

root@dim-laptop:/home/dim/Desktop# mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdc1 /usbdisk/
Record 6 has no FILE magic (0x44414142)
Failed to open inode: Input/output error
Failed to mount '/dev/sdc1': Input/output error
NTFS is either inconsistent, or you have hardware faults, or you have a
SoftRAID/FakeRAID hardware. In the first case run chkdsk /f on Windows
then reboot into Windows TWICE. The usage of the /f parameter is very
important! If you have SoftRAID/FakeRAID then first you must activate
it and mount a different device under the /dev/mapper/ directory, (e.g.
/dev/mapper/nvidia_eahaabcc1). Please see the 'dmraid' documentation
for the details.
root@dim-laptop:/home/dim/Desktop# ntfs-3g --help

ntfs-3g 1.2216 integrated FUSE 27 - Third Generation NTFS Driver


//thanks for helping me out so fast

0x44414142= "DAAB" which is little-endian, so it should be read from the right, that is "BAAD".

The BAAD file magic on the disc refers to hardware problems (bad sectors), exactly as I suspected.

A reformat could help temporarily but your data will never be safe until the disk gets replaced with a reliable one.

Sorry for the bad news, good luck with the replacement.

is there any way to temporarily mount the drive so I can pull the onformation out without using windows?

Only with driver code change.

thanks, I really appreciate the quickness of response

here's a quick update:
I took the HD to work where we do have several windows PCs and and an r-studio software license. All my files were recovered, no damage to them at all. Formatted the drive, and ran full chkdsk again

No bad sectors were found. I think the ntfs driver in Kubuntu screwed up my NTFS drive. This time I will be using the compiled driver I installed last week, hopefully no errors will reoccur

I have the exact problem of ntfs-3g writing me out.
However my disk cannot possibly be bad, because Win98 setup has screwed my [first] NTFS partition with trying to install Win98 into an extended FAT32 partition nearby.

I have tried to FIXBOOT with WinXP recovery CD, but did not help, and *after that* _any_ WinXP based installation/rescue bootCD I try it simply hangs to black screen after writing "Setup is inspecting your hardware configuration" unless I remove the HDD from my laptop :(

I cannot put HDD into another PC and run chkdsk, because it is not ATA connector (the HDD is SATA in my HP 6710b laptop's 3D-DriveGuard)

So, I am deadlocked (cannot re-install winxp) with linux tools; ntfsfix cannot fix it. How could I fix it from linux/linux boot CDs?

Hope you can help me here,

Thanks.
--
sledge

The Win98 setup damaged your NTFS. Reinstall from backup.

The weirdest thing is that Win98 has left the MBR and BOOT records of NTFS /dev/sda1 intact (i have backups, and diff`ed them, -- no differences).
I have no other backups.

No idea how, but it seems that Win98 corrupted the FAT of the NTFS:

I had /dev/sda6 (in extended partition) as FAT32, and Win98 setup took this as the one to be formatted (the formatting was really fast - only 2GB instead of 25GB of /dev/sda1) - I checked later, yes, exactly /dev/sda6, and not /dev/sda1, got formatted.

However, while after it in NTFS /dev/sda1 with hexedit from the 0x7E1A (according to the boot error I get google match: http://fugitivethought.com/blog.php?act ... blog_id=77) I saw mere zeroes at that offset :(

The summary of the beginning of /dev/sda1 in hexedit:


Hope we can recover at least something out of this..

--
sledge