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I have installed Ubuntu24.04LTS and tried to connect an external hard drive with NTFS file system, but there was an unable to mount error, which seems a common error. I tried to mount the drive and also ran the ntfsfix command, but didn't succeed. Before these I could use the drive with windows, but now it is broken also. Windows recognises the drive plugged in, but it doesn't show up in the file explorer. In the task manager the partition type is unknown (instead of previous NTFs) and I cannot use the change drive letter and path option, because it's grayed out. The only available option showing up is deleting volume.

I am desperate about this situation and I know very little about this topic and was wasting long hours without any progress. Please help me, what options I have to restore the data on the drive? Please inform me if I omitted any important information or my phrasing is not clear. Thank you for your help.

Update:

The error message was this one: Error mounting ... at ...: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superlock on ...,missing codepage or helper program or other error.

I wrote this to be a common error because of these questions:

Cannot mount NTFS Drive in 24.04 LTS

https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubuntu/comments/1e6xyi8/cant_mount_external_drive_in_2404/

I can't open NTFS External HDD | mounting error

Output of lsblk -f is this, sda is the external drive in question:

enter image description here

Output of ntfsfix /dev/sda now if I run again the command:

enter image description here

Update2: I think this case is different from the mentioned question and from the one karel writes below because of the following: Let's call state0 if the disk has NTFS file system and Ubuntu24 cannot mount, state1 when Ubuntu24 can read and write the disk without problem. First I tried to reach state1 from state0 as well as these questions. But along the path somehow I got to state(-1), where he file system is not NTFS anymore and the disk data is unaccessible in every OS. Now I want just to understand what happened and go back to state0 and recover my lost data, it's okay if just on Windows like before.

I asked the question here, because this happened while I used ubuntu and that caused the problem on Windows, where originally everything was okay.

Should I run chkdsk on Windows or use ddrescue to try saving data? I'm afraid of making problems worse with doing anything.

CSD
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1 Answers1

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I believe using ddrescue then other tools to recover files is your best option now. Ubuntu Datarecovery documentation has some good advice. I've successfully used ddrescue images in the past to recover (most) files from damaged NTFS drives in the past. If this doesn't help you could try some of the $$$ disk rescue programs on Windows. I don't have any experience using these, and depending on the type of damage they may not be any better than the free tools available on Ubuntu, but are likely easier to use. The key is to get the ddrescue image on another disk in case your external drive has failing hardware vs. a software glitch.

Walter Wittel
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