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I have a 2TB external WD drive that I use for backup and movies/music such and so forth since back when I had windows running on my laptop. To be on the safe side, I unmounted the drive and ran a short test using smartctl which gave a result of completed: read error at 90%

$ sudo smartctl -l selftest /dev/sdc
smartctl 6.5 2016-01-24 r4214 [x86_64-linux-4.4.0-36-generic] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-16, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org


=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
Num  Test_Description  Status        Remaining LifeTime(hours) LBA_of_first_error
 1  Short offline   Completed: read failure    90%      4876         9938552
 2  Short offline   Completed: read failure    90%      4876         9938552

Trying to fix the issue, I ran ntfsfix

$ sudo ntfsfix /dev/sdc
Mounting volume... NTFS signature is missing.
FAILED
Attempting to correct errors... NTFS signature is missing.
FAILED
Failed to startup volume: Invalid argument
NTFS signature is missing.
Trying the alternate boot sector
The alternate bootsector is usable
Set sector count to 3906963455 instead of 3906961407
Rewriting the bootsector
The boot sector has been rewritten
ntfs_mst_post_read_fixup_warn: magic: 0xffffffff  size: 1024   usa_ofs: 65535  usa_count: 65534: Invalid argument
Record 0 has no FILE magic (0xffffffff)
Failed to load $MFT: Input/output error
Volume is corrupt. You should run chkdsk.

Now the drive is no longer mountable on Disks utility.

dmseg | tail returned the following result:

[ 1697.980340] scsi 7:0:0:1: Enclosure         WD       SES Device       1019 PQ: 0 ANSI: 6
[ 1697.982222] sd 7:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg3 type 0
[ 1697.982287] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc] 3906963456 512-byte logical blocks: (2.00 TB/1.82 TiB)
[ 1697.982518] ses 7:0:0:1: Attached Enclosure device
[ 1697.982673] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc] Write Protect is off
[ 1697.982684] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc] Mode Sense: 47 00 10 08
[ 1697.982686] ses 7:0:0:1: Attached scsi generic sg4 type 13
[ 1697.983481] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc] No Caching mode page found
[ 1697.983490] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through
[ 1711.399946] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc] Attached SCSI disk

I thought about mounting the drive directly from the terminal, but I really cant afford to loose the data on this drive and didn't want to make another mistake. What can I do to fix the issue? please keep in mind I am very new to linux. Thanks

Byte Commander
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Karan K
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1 Answers1

2

I've fixed the issue and gotten the drive to mount.

Posting how I fixed it in case someone else has a similar issue.

I installed testdisk and ran it

sudo apt-get install testdisk sudo testdisk

and basically followed the instructions choosing first to analyze which showed me the problem and applied the fix. Reboot system and the external harddisk is running fine. Data intact.

Karan K
  • 85