Cant mount my 2tb Hitachi hard drive

Hi level1. I’m unable to mount my 2TB hard drive, and need to recover it’s data. I’ve been trying to solve it and figure out went wrong on different operating systems (windows and linux). The drive was formatted to NTFS before it went bad. For some reason Linux shows it as one partition, and windows shows it as multiple partitions. Hitachi model: HUA723020ALA64

I tried to run ‘CHKDSK’ on it under windows, but couldn’t because windows hasn’t been assigned a drive path. It also doesn’t appear under “Devices and drives”. I then to linux and ran ‘ntfsfix’ on the drive as well as “Gparted” with “check and repair” feature. Both failed to fix things for me.

I may be wrong, but I think the drive may have failed when was using a crappy SATA to USB adapter.
Here’s a screenshot album of what I’m talking about, https://imgur.com/a/Ptz1i and here’s the output from ‘ntfsfix’ (which failed):

[firstl@first-pc ~]$ sudo ntfsfix /dev/sda
[sudo] password for firstl:
Mounting volume… ntfs_mst_post_read_fixup_warn: magic: 0xffd59ee8 size: 1024 usa_ofs: 14210 usa_count: 51108: Invalid argument
ntfs_mst_post_read_fixup_warn: magic: 0xc4cb2312 size: 1024 usa_ofs: 50385 usa_count: 12578: Invalid argument
ntfs_mst_post_read_fixup_warn: magic: 0x45a85092 size: 1024 usa_ofs: 47992 usa_count: 2108: Invalid argument
$MFTMirr error: Invalid mft record for ‘$MFTMirr’.
FAILED
Attempting to correct errors…
Processing $MFT and $MFTMirr…
Reading $MFT… OK
Reading $MFTMirr… ntfs_mst_post_read_fixup_warn: magic: 0xffd59ee8 size: 1024 usa_ofs: 14210 usa_count: 51108: Invalid argument
ntfs_mst_post_read_fixup_warn: magic: 0xc4cb2312 size: 1024 usa_ofs: 50385 usa_count: 12578: Invalid argument
ntfs_mst_post_read_fixup_warn: magic: 0x45a85092 size: 1024 usa_ofs: 47992 usa_count: 2108: Invalid argument
OK
Comparing $MFTMirr to $MFT… FAILED
$MFTMirr error: Invalid mft record for $MFTMirr.
[firstl@first-pc ~]$

If the error appears to be the file system tables then maybe TestDisk might be your best bet. I’m pretty sure it will do a search and show you the results before writing anything, so if it shows the proper partitions then it should be able to restore them. If not, then it was only a loss of a few minutes.

You should be able to install and run it from the command line. The step by step instructions from the link has worked for me in the past. That is assuming it is recoverable. Good luck!

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dude… what are you doing? sda is the whole drive, not an individual partition

do this. list out the partitions. I like cfdisk, but you can do it with fdisk

cfdisk /dev/sda

You can then see the individual partitions on the drive.
You can then do ntfsfix on /dev/sda1 or 2 or 3 or whatever

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Thanks, that did the trick!!! I used the testdisk’s step-by-step instructions, which fixed the drive so it could be repaired in windows where it was originally formatted. All my files are back. https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Step_By_Step

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Good. Now build a backup solution.

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If you had Windows installed on the drive, you will have at least 3 partitions, with only the main OS partition being NTFS. @NetBandit is right if you want to use Linux tools. There are tools available for Windows as well if you are more comfortable in that environment. Whatever the case, at the very least it sounds like the Master File Table is corrupt. Software that can detect the partitions that were there will be able to rebuild the MFT and you should be good to go. My advice, especially if you care about this data, is to get a RAW image of this drive before you go poking it with tools.

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Yeah, agree with @noenken here. Get a backup plan ASAP. Life is too short to have a heart attack over data loss.

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I know, and did that. Unfortunately I Initially used ‘ntfsfix’ on sda1 which according to ‘ntfsfix’ didn’t exist. The drive was real fucky. The drive had a single 2tb NTFS partition and was originally formatted in windows. I’ve noticed that I’ve only been able to repair drives originally formatted in windows in windows(not linux). :frowning:

‘testdisk’ is what did trick for me though. :slight_smile:

I definitely will, have just been lazy. Gotta throw out this faulty SATA to USB adapter out too. It’s literally the cheapest one you can buy, and had acted up before.

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