Can't find old HDD

[gold_finger]

Don't bother with mount commands that don't specify a partition number (eg.  just /dev/sdf won't work;  needs to be sdf1).

monkeyman@monkeyman:~$ sudo mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdf1 /media/external
ntfs_mst_post_read_fixup_warn: magic: 0x44414142  size: 1024  usa_ofs: 20480  usa_count: 36364: Invalid argument
Record 0 has no FILE magic (0x44414142)
Failed to load $MFT: Input/output error
Failed to mount '/dev/sdf1': Input/output error
NTFS is either inconsistent, or there is a hardware fault, or it's 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 the device is a SoftRAID/FakeRAID then first activate
it and mount a different device under the /dev/mapper/ directory, (e.g.
/dev/mapper/nvidia_eahaabcc1). Please see the 'dmraid' documentation
for more details.

Something got corrupted on the drive and won't let you access the partition anymore.  Looked up info on error message and sounds like it is something you need to fix from a running Windows system.  Do you have any computers running Windows right now, or access to a friends machine that you could plug the drive into?  Basically, most answers I saw gave same solution as posted here:  http://askubuntu.com/questions/335198/un...hard-drive.

Just out of curiosity, when was the last time you used that external drive?  Did it have a full Windows installation on it, or was it always just a partition that held only data files?

[Monkeyman]

My laptop still runs Windows 7 (please, don't tell anybody ).  I don't remember how long it's been since I accessed it but probably within the past couple of months.  I can try plugging it in to that tonight.  It never had any OS.  It was always data only (movies I copied from my DVDs/VHS tapes...they're legit).  I wanted to make everything digital to save space.  I had hundreds if not thousands of movies in various formats.  Walls and walls of movies, full seasons of TV shows on DVD, etc.  I copied everything to HDDs then gave most of the movies away.  I think there are/were about 100 movies on that HDD.  I'd hate to think I've lost them all.  If it's a mechanical issue, I'll see if I can find another identical HDD somewhere and try to steal its circuit board although I can hear/feel it spin up.  This computer shows that it's physically there so I'm not really sure what I'd have to do in Windows to "fix" it.  Any thoughts on that?  I'll read your link this evening (WAY past my bedtime already).

[gold_finger]

My laptop still runs Windows 7 (please, don't tell anybody ).

Plenty of people dual-boot or continue to need/use Windows for various things.  Nothing wrong with that.

This computer shows that it's physically there so I'm not really sure what I'd have to do in Windows to "fix" it.  Any thoughts on that?  I'll read your link this evening (WAY past my bedtime already).

It is a strange problem and I've never run into it myself.  The link I referenced tells you what to do in Windows, so just follow those instructions.

Before trying to run any fix, see if you are able to access and use the files from Windows 7.  I'd imagine (but don't know for sure) that if something is preventing access in Linux, it would also cause same problem in Windows.  If you don't have any problem in Windows, then I'd definitely recommend you follow instructions below before you mess with it at all.

One thing you might want to do before messing further with the drive is to make a cloned image of it.  If you have another drive of equal or greater size, this tool seems to come highly recommended by many people in forums:  Macrium Reflect.  Install it to your Windows OS and use it to make a clone of the drive.  Then try recovering access to your files and if something goes terribly wrong you've got the original backed-up.  (You might be better off leaving the original alone and try your recovery efforts on the cloned drive instead.)  I've never used the software myself, so you may need to do some research if the options to clone that partition are not clearly obvious.

In a nutshell, what I would do if the original DOES work in Windows, but not in Linux:

*  Clone the drive
*  Test ability to access cloned drive from Windows
*  Test ability to access cloned drive from Linux
*  If can't access from Linux, boot back into Windows and run repair procedure outline in link to the cloned drive and see what happens.  (Leave original drive alone if it works in Windows.)

Good luck.

[Scott(0)]

Regarding cloning the drive

If you clone the drive there's also a *chance* that the problem will fix itself, sort of. If the problem is bad sectors, for example, most clone software has the ability to deal with that, either by reading the bad sectors repeatedly until the information is extracted successfully or skipping the bad sector altogether. Which may not be so bad in your situation. If just a minor insignificant number of sectors are skipped in an entire movie file you probably won't really notice it ... too much.

[Monkeyman]

Since the HDD appears to be ****ed on my Win7 laptop, too, I'll assume it's basically dead.  I'll try cloning it to see if that helps.  If not, I thank you all for your help.