how do i get back files from a corrupt partition

hi,
recently my friend ran into a problem..he had three NTFS partitions on his computer running windows2000 server..after a reinstall his E: drive would not open up though it was shown in his "My Computer" ..an error message "file system may be corrupt" was displayed..out of curiosity i plugged that hard disk into my computer runnig Red Hat linux 7.3 ..i was able to mount that partition under linux..moreover i could also access some of the files..i copied as much as i could onto a FAT32 partition on my hard disk..however i was unable to copy a few files which were important..while trying to copy those i got an I/O read error..

is there any way (some tool perhaps) i can get back the remaining files?

if linux could identify and even open up files on a windows partition which windows could not even identify as its own then i am sure that some more could be done from linux..this is very important for me and if there are anyone who has been through such a situation then your tips are valuable and welcome..i am even ready to go to the extend of writing a program myself..however i dont know where to start ( very funny)..

thank you all for your time..

hi,
recently my friend ran into a problem..he had three NTFS partitions on his computer running windows2000 server..after a reinstall his E: drive would not open up though it was shown in his "My Computer" ..an error message "file system may be corrupt" was displayed..out of curiosity i plugged that hard disk into my computer runnig Red Hat linux 7.3 ..i was able to mount that partition under linux..moreover i could also access some of the files..i copied as much as i could onto a FAT32 partition on my hard disk..however i was unable to copy a few files which were important..while trying to copy those i got an I/O read error..

is there any way (some tool perhaps) i can get back the remaining files?

if linux could identify and even open up files on a windows partition which windows could not even identify as its own then i am sure that some more could be done from linux..this is very important for me and if there are anyone who has been through such a situation then your tips are valuable and welcome..i am even ready to go to the extend of writing a program myself..however i dont know where to start ( very funny)..

thank you all for your time..

I, myself had also run into this problem. I downloaded a few tools for windows saying it could "fix" the corrupted parts on the hard drive. But nothing I did worked. After reading your post I decided to plug my hard drive into my other pc running linux and it also found some of the files for me.

I, myself had also run into this problem. I downloaded a few tools for windows saying it could "fix" the corrupted parts on the hard drive. But nothing I did worked. After reading your post I decided to plug my hard drive into my other pc running linux and it also found some of the files for me.

you could try a program called drive rescue, its a freeware program that ive used a couple of times with limited success on NTFS partitions, it doesnt promise anything as they havnt finished implementing NTFS on the program yet, but its worth a shot as they do say it can recover from ntfs

you could try a program called drive rescue, its a freeware program that ive used a couple of times with limited success on NTFS partitions, it doesnt promise anything as they havnt finished implementing NTFS on the program yet, but its worth a shot as they do say it can recover from ntfs

You can use ntfsdos.sys as well to mount the thing from a dos floppy. This is of some usefulness.

The free version of ntfsdos.sys is read-only, but you wouldn't want to write to a messed up partition anyway (it'd likely make it worse)

If you're getting "I/O Error" while reading files, it seems likely that there is acutally a fault on the disk - it is bad. Look in /var/log/messages for more info, it is probably completely spammed with IDE error messages (if it's an IDE disk).

I would recommend that you completely reformat the whole disk and check for bad sectors - if they remain, the disk is damaged and should not be used (a factory-level format might fix it, but don't do this unless the disk is definitely beyond any other repair). Modern disks should show no bad sectors, ever, because the disk electronics maps them out automatically.

Disks with a few bad sectors often develop more. Beware!

It's unlikely if there is physical damage that the data can be recovered by anyone other than a professional data recovery company - they will charge a lot of money.

I guess the moral is, keep backups :)

I have to agree with slarty on this one,for the simple reason because I had a similar problem with win98, on a pentium 200mmx and a 3gig h/disk.All this happened while upgrading it from p133 to pentium 200mmxx.So basically I removed everything and put in the other m/board with everything else.When I started up I got exactly the same error"Hard disk Failure" and on a second attempt "disk I/O error.The cmos detects it but could not read from the boot sector I suppose.

This thing should have booted without any problems, with the exception of picking up all the relevant new board devices etc..after booting.Bad news was that I had to partition it, reformat and load win 98 again.I must admit that it was a rather old disk but still...

I suppose it is just one of those things.This is not to discourage you, but it may well be your only sollution.Maybe a low-level format is even better.Hopfully someone else could supply you with another sollution.Good luck.

regards
v/man:)