failure to mount corrupted drive

[James Michael Fultz]

* Steve Reilly <sfreilly at roadrunner.com> [2009-10-10 12:34 -0400]:
> trying to recover data for a friend off an ntfs drive.  well, fdisk
> reports it as ntfs anyway.  booted a gparted cd and it reported it as
> unknown.
> 
> mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 /media/disk -o force
> 
> with this command im getting an error says this doesnt seem to have a
> valid ntfs?  i thought force, meant FORCE, how can i mount this drive to
> get pictures off it?  using 9.04 live cd at the moment...., but have
> tried no less than a dozen others, none have automounted this drive.

Check whether the drive is physically failing before further recovery
attempts.  That can change your game plan.  smartctl would be helpful
there.

Here are some links to information and tools that could help:

"Repair NTFS Boot Sector" - when an NTFS volume is
inaccessible/unmountable:
<http://ubuntu-rescue-remix.org/node/57>

Ubuntu documentation on data recovery:
<https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DataRecovery>

Data recovery guide with good information on how to check whether your
drive is physically failing and what to do if it is:
<http://wiki.lunarsoft.net/wiki/Data_Recovery>