Hard Drive Recovery (force mount?)

[wissemeier05]

Good Evening,

A friend of mine crashed their windows box and asked if I could recover their files before they nuked the hard drive and started fresh.

So she brought the tower over....it was a dell...... I pulled the hard drive and hooked it up to my Linux (8.04) laptop via a hard drive key.


hard drive key
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16812161002


I have recovered files in the past just plug in and read it like a big flash drive. This time the hard drive will not "mount" and I cannot access it. Are there any tricks for "force" mounting an external drive?

Here is the error I am getting.


TIA
Dan

[srt4play]

sudo ntfs-3g /dev/sd? /media/? -o force

Replace the question marks with correct drive device name and mountpoint.

[wissemeier05]

Thanks for the reply, How do i determine what the mount point is?
(i am still kinda new at all of this)

Thanks,
Dan

[srt4play]

Thanks for the reply, How do i determine what the mount point is?
(i am still kinda new at all of this)

Thanks,
Dan

It's whatever you want it to be. For example, you could create a directory /media/external

sudo mkdir /media/external

So the command becomes:

sudo ntfs-3g /dev/sd? /media/external -o force

[wissemeier05]

dan@dan-laptop:~$ sudo fdisk -l
[sudo] password for dan:

Disk /dev/sda: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x4d08e236

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 3916 31455238+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 3917 24321 163903162+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 3917 7180 26218048+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 7181 7442 2104483+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda7 7443 7460 144553+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda8 7461 24321 135435951 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdc: 80.0 GB, 80000000000 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9726 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xf52bcf0e

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdc1 1 5 40131 de Dell Utility
/dev/sdc2 * 6 9725 78075900 7 HPFS/NTFS
dan@dan-laptop:~$



so then after I run
"sudo mkdir /media/external"

I could run

sudo ntfs-3g /dev/sd? /media/external -o force

and instead of a "?" I would put "c2"

[wissemeier05]

It worked ! Thanks a Ton!

Dan

[fuzzywigg]

This post was GREAT!! It really got me out of a pinch. Note to self, Windows does not play nice with others.

Great work Ubuntu community

[josesalinasc]

hello, i have the same problem only my hard drive is in EXT3 format
I tried to change "sudo ntfs-3g /dev/sd? /media/external -o force" to EXT3 and had no luck

this may need a totally diferent code

thanks

[bumanie]

Educated guess would be that you need to remove ntfs-3g, not just ntfs as ntfs-3g is a package that allows read/write to ntfs filesystems. Put ext3 where ntfs-3g is. Not sure why you can't mount ext3, unless the filesystem is very damaged, if so:
You could try photorec which is part of testdisk. Despite the name, photorec recovers much more than photos - I think there are 100+ file types it can recover. It is filesystem independent, so it works even if the filesystem is wrecked. It can be run off a live cd sudo apt-get install testdisk, then in terminal sudo photorec to start the program. Alternatively, go here to download a specific live cd of testdisk or a usb pendrive version. There are also tutorials on the above site. Good luck.

[nick8539]

Hi hopefully someone can help me....

when I try to put in this command it says

sudo: ntfs-3g: commad not found

I'm fairly new at this but i am trying to recover data from a hard drive..

I put


sudo ntfs-3g /dev/sda3/ media/external -o force