fsck'ing an NTFS file system

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sid

I have a crashed Windows XP system drive, I booted into knopppix and
did a dd_rescue of this drive (30GB) onto a 40GB second drive (after
making identical partitions on the second drive). It was reporting some
errors here and there but towards end (I was doing it in reverse
direction) encountered lots of errors. It said almost 6Gb errors in the
transferred data. I had copied sector 1 to begin with that contaned the
boot info and partition table. I then disconnected the original drive
and hooked up the second as master and booted up knoppix. It ofcourse
won't mount this drive with "bad superblock error". Now what? I read
somewhere that you can't fsck an NTFS file system in linux. DO I have
to do an equivalent (scandisk?) in DOS and then bring the disk to
linux? I am clueless here - I just want to recover whatever I can get
from the cloned drive and rebuild my windows system.

thanks
SS
 
I have a crashed Windows XP system drive, I booted into knopppix and
did a dd_rescue of this drive (30GB) onto a 40GB second drive (after
making identical partitions on the second drive). It was reporting some
errors here and there but towards end (I was doing it in reverse
direction) encountered lots of errors. It said almost 6Gb errors in the
transferred data. I had copied sector 1 to begin with that contaned the
boot info and partition table. I then disconnected the original drive
and hooked up the second as master and booted up knoppix. It ofcourse
won't mount this drive with "bad superblock error". Now what? I read
somewhere that you can't fsck an NTFS file system in linux. DO I have
to do an equivalent (scandisk?) in DOS and then bring the disk to
linux? I am clueless here - I just want to recover whatever I can get
from the cloned drive and rebuild my windows system.
Click to expand...

I'm not familiar with knoppix but many hard drive copy program copies
sector by sector right down to the original drive's CHS directory but
since your target drive is 40GB, it'd have different drive geometry so
exact copy isn't possible without some read errors later on.

A quick way to copy everything from one to another drive is to use the
old DOS command xcopy. It copies everything and can search and copy
subdirectories. IIRC xcopy *.* /s /r [source drive] [destination
drive] is all you need. I can't remember if it also copies hidden
files and I've never tried this on NTFS drive but running DOS under
Win XP should be OK.
 
This is precisely the reason I created idential partitions on the
larger drive. My original drive had a small 30MB FAT16 partition that
holds DELL utilities and the remaining space partitioned as NTFS to
hold WinXP. I used fdisk in linux to create two partitions whose
sectors started and ended exacly as in the first drive (use fdisk -u -l
/dev/hda to find out partitions on first drive). I think if I run
scandisk in DOS it should make the disk accessible, But I am not sure.
 
and hooked up the second as master and booted up knoppix. It ofcourse
won't mount this drive with "bad superblock error". Now what? I read
somewhere that you can't fsck an NTFS file system in linux. DO I have
to do an equivalent (scandisk?) in DOS and then bring the disk to
linux?
Click to expand...

Forget Linux for this. Also, there is no scandisk anymore (long gone with
DOS thankgawd) The new utility is chkdsk (no, not the same as chkdisk in
DOS). To be able to use that search around for Bart PE to find a way to
have a bootable CD distribution of windows. You can run the
`chkdsk c: /f' from in there. There is also ntfsdos from sysinternals.

I've never tried dd on windows partitions, but I guess it should have
worked OK. You might try Ghost, partition magic or one of the other
imaging utils to bit copy your drive if you can't mount your copy under
windows.

~Jason

--
 
Nonsense. All drives over 8GB have the same HS geometry, expect for the odd
case of H=240 vs 255. If you do try to read H>240, you get errors on every
cylinder, not just at the end.
 
Forget Linux for this. Also, there is no scandisk anymore (long gone with
DOS thankgawd) The new utility is chkdsk (no, not the same as chkdisk in
DOS). To be able to use that search around for Bart PE to find a way to
have a bootable CD distribution of windows. You can run the
`chkdsk c: /f' from in there. There is also ntfsdos from sysinternals.
Click to expand...

Don't use CHKDSK in fix or repair mode, unless you have
a good copy of your original disk. It might make recovery
impossible !
 
I have a crashed Windows XP system drive, I booted into knopppix and
did a dd_rescue of this drive (30GB) onto a 40GB second drive (after
making identical partitions on the second drive). It was reporting some
errors here and there but towards end (I was doing it in reverse
direction) encountered lots of errors. It said almost 6Gb errors in the
transferred data. I had copied sector 1 to begin with that contaned the
boot info and partition table. I then disconnected the original drive
and hooked up the second as master and booted up knoppix. It ofcourse
won't mount this drive with "bad superblock error". Now what? I read
somewhere that you can't fsck an NTFS file system in linux. DO I have
to do an equivalent (scandisk?) in DOS and then bring the disk to
linux? I am clueless here - I just want to recover whatever I can get
from the cloned drive and rebuild my windows system.

thanks
SS
Click to expand...
Based on the extent of the damage you report, you may find it difficult
to recover that system. You might be wise to start over with a fresh
install of Windows, that is, if you must have windows in the first place.
If you are willing to spend money, then there are professional data
recovery services which claim high recovery rates. They might be
able to help recover your files.

BTW, it is good practice to perform backups on a regular schedule to avoid
the need for these services.

One backup tool which I have used is from the ntfs project:
http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/

[OT ?]: I have been very impressed with the tools, especially "ntfsclone."
This is a very good tool for making backups of windows partitions using
linux. In this case, I prefer the specialist tool (ntfsclone) over the
generalist (dd). It is so good, I am surprised it hasn't received more
attention. The tool "ntfsresize" is also handy. This project has done
very well considering the hostile environment in which they have been
working (Microsoft has not released the specification for NTFS).
Together, these tools replace a lot of the functionality of Symantec
Ghost, Partition Magic, etc.
 
Douglas said:
.... snip ...

One backup tool which I have used is from the ntfs project:
http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/

[OT ?]: I have been very impressed with the tools, especially
"ntfsclone." This is a very good tool for making backups of
windows partitions using linux. In this case, I prefer the
specialist tool (ntfsclone) over the generalist (dd). It is so
good, I am surprised it hasn't received more attention. The tool
"ntfsresize" is also handy. This project has done very well
considering the hostile environment in which they have been
working (Microsoft has not released the specification for NTFS).
Together, these tools replace a lot of the functionality of
Symantec Ghost, Partition Magic, etc.
Click to expand...

I have a book here "Inside the Windows NT File System", by Helen
Custer, ISBN 1-55615-660-X, 1994, Microsoft Press, which gives a
pretty good idea of what goes on.
 
sid said:
This is
Click to expand...

What is?
precisely the reason I created identical partitions on the
larger drive. My original drive had a small 30MB FAT16 partition that
holds DELL utilities and the remaining space partitioned as NTFS to
hold WinXP. I used fdisk in linux to create two partitions whose
sectors started and ended exactly as in the first drive (use fdisk -u -l
/dev/hda to find out partitions on first drive). I think if I run
scandisk in DOS it should make the disk accessible, But I am not sure.
Click to expand...
 
Impmon said:
I'm not familiar with knoppix but many hard drive copy program copies
sector by sector right down to the original drive's CHS directory but
since your target drive is 40GB, it'd have different drive geometry so
exact copy isn't possible without some read errors later on.
Click to expand...

Nonsense. And you can't even copy more than 8GB using CHS.
And even if the drives used a different CHS the copy would still be
identical due to the linear (LBA like, incremental) nature of the copying.
No program in it's right mind will copy sectors using only the source
CHS for reading -and writing as well- when the destination drive is using
a different CHS translation. However, the MBR CHS (as copied from the
source) of the destination drive may be different to the CHS in actual use.
That will require a re-boot of the system or a re-detect after the copying
process for the OS to properly recognize the filesystem structures.
A quick way to copy everything from one to another drive is to use the
old DOS command xcopy. It copies everything and can search and copy
subdirectories. IIRC xcopy *.* /s /r [source drive] [destination
drive] is all you need. I can't remember if it also copies hidden
files and I've never tried this on NTFS drive but running DOS under
Win XP should be OK.
Click to expand...
 
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