Broken NTFS partition – “Incomplete multi-sector transfer”

hard driventfspartitioning

I have a 8-year old Windows-XP-only computer with one NTFS partition. Starting up Windows is not possible anymore, it stops with "A disk read error occurred". When trying to mount the partition using a Ubuntu Karmic Live CD, I get the following error:

root@ubuntu:/home/ubuntu/Downloads/testdisk-6.11.3/linux# mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 /mnt
Incomplete multi-sector transfer: magic: 0x44414142  size: 1024  usa_ofs: 48  usa_count: 1  data: 588  usn: 590: Input/output error
Record 0 has no FILE magic (0x44414142)
Failed to load $MFT: Input/output error
Failed to mount '/dev/sda1': 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.

There is no RAID, btw. I already did the following steps:

  • dd-based backup (using Clonezilla Live CD), so that I have infinite attempts to restore that thing…
  • gparted recognizes the partition as NTFS but gives me the same error as the mount command.
  • Checked MBR. It is perfectly okay (equal to the last backup).
  • Checked partition table. Partition offset, type and size are correct.
  • Fired up recovery console from a Windows XP CD and ran chkdsk /R but it says (roughly translated!) "at least one irrecoverable error occurred". dir listing of C:\ did not work, either.
  • Started Windows XP installation to see what it shows. At the partition selection prompt, it says that the partition type is unknown.
  • Had testdisk repair the MFT using the mirrored MFT (running on the Karmic live CD). Afterwards testdisk says that both MFT copies are equal, but the file system is still broken.

What else could I do to repair the file system? Does it make sense to try it in another computer (I'll need another week for that…)?

Best Answer

At this point, your main goal should be data-recovery. Photorec can help, because you don't need to mount to use it. Without an MFT, though, you unfortunately don't have a lot of options.

Finally, after you reinstall, buy an external drive and start a daily backup regiment. Macrium Reflect prevented a crisis last time this happened to me. Highly recommended.

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