1 Topic by anotherusername

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Topic: Can't Rescue Data : Failed creating read-only view

I had a windows 7 disk that I formatted with Linux, and I need to get some user data from off of it.

(thought I had backed up ALL the user data, but one user's data was NOT backed up.)

The drive is currently partitioned for Linux Mint.

I am using gparted from a live boot usb (also Linux Mint)

I tried running rescue data and I get this notification:

Data Found: File systems
#1: ntfs (152531 MiB)

However, when I try to create a view so that I can copy the data to an external drive, I get this message:

Failed creating read-only view

An error occurred while creating the read-only view.
Either the file system can not be mounted (like swap), or there are inconsistencies or errors in the file system.

Any thoughts on what I might need to do to recover that data?

~~~

Someone on a windows forum said that I would basically need to reformat the drive as ntfs, then install it as a slave drive in a windows box, and then use windows-based utilities to recover the data.

So my questions are:

1) Does that sound like a good idea or even safe???

2) What would be the best way to do this with gparted? To reformat as an ntfs drive so that I could put it as a slave in a windows machine?

I have used testdisk on this disk, and I am not sure how to interpret the results. I had to do a deeper scan, and this is what it came up with:

Disk /dev/sda - 160 GB / 149 GiB - CHS 19452 255 63

The harddisk (160 GB / 149 GiB) seems too small! (< 14059260 TB / 12786823 TiB)
Check the harddisk size: HD jumpers settings, BIOS detection...

The following partitions can't be recovered:
Partition Start End Size in sectors


MS Data 151259152 455704591 304445440
MS Data 151261616 455707055 304445440
MS Data 151263136 455708575 304445440
MS Data 151267864 455713303 304445440
MS Data 151269048 455714487 304445440
MS Data 151269336 455714775 304445440
MS Data 151269480 455714919 304445440
MS Data 151270760 455716199 304445440

[ Continue ]
XFS 6.2+ - bitmap version blocksize=1952670573, 14059260 TB / 12786823 TiB

After I hit continue, it shows me all of this:

Disk /dev/sda - 160 GB / 149 GiB - CHS 19452 255 63
     Partition               Start        End    Size in sectors
>  MS Data                     2046  304447485  304445440
   MS Data                     2048  304447487  304445440
   MS Data                   112455  312496379  312383925
   MS Data                   112640  304447487  304334848
   MS Data                 13672827   13693565      20739 [NO NAME]
   MS Data                 22556960   22559839       2880 [EFISECTOR]
   MS Data                 22559840   22562719       2880 [EFISECTOR]
   MS Data                 23313923   23320096       6174
   MS Data                 23320096   23326269       6174 [Boot]
   MS Data                 32806115   32812288       6174
   MS Data                 32812288   32818461       6174 [Boot]
   MS Data                 47543043   47549216       6174
   MS Data                 47549216   47555389       6174 [Boot]
   MS Data                 58912363   58929435      17073 [A00]
   MS Data                 63217099   63219978       2880 [NO NAME]
   MS Data                 63217123   63220002       2880 [NO NAME]
   MS Data                 63217931   63220810       2880 [NO NAME]
   MS Data                 63433539   63436418       2880 [NO NAME]
   MS Data                 63434155   63437034       2880 [NO NAME]
   MS Data                268751875  268754754       2880 [NO NAME]
   Linux Swap             304449536  312498159    8048624

2 Reply by gedakc

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Re: Can't Rescue Data : Failed creating read-only view

anotherusername wrote:

Someone on a windows forum said that I would basically need to reformat the drive as ntfs, then install it as a slave drive in a windows box, and then use windows-based utilities to recover the data.

So my questions are:

1) Does that sound like a good idea or even safe???

No.  Any more writing to the hard drive will further reduce the chance of recovering data.


anotherusername wrote:

2) What would be the best way to do this with gparted? To reformat as an ntfs drive so that I could put it as a slave in a windows machine?

Do not reformat or write to the hard drive.  Instead I recommend making an image copy of the drive to another drive.  That way if anything goes wrong in the recovery steps you'll be able to restore back to the same starting point.

If the file system is messed up bad enough that it cannot be mounted, then I suggest you try photorec.  Photorec will scan the surface of the hard drive looking for file types it recognizes.  This will be a very tedious and time consuming task.

If you do not wish to do this then you might try connecting the drive to a Windows computer to see if it can repair the file system.  However this will write to the drive and might reduce further the likelihood of recovering your data.

3 Reply by anotherusername

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Re: Can't Rescue Data : Failed creating read-only view

Thank you for the advice.

I have used photorec to recover all the photos (jpg, png, gif) as well as the various Office documents.

It is tedious SORTING them because photorec basically changed all the names of the files, so now I need to open up every document and figure out what it is.

Is there a way to delete the MBR without damaging the data? I think that might help me use the drive as a slave drive in Windows.  The reason I need to delete the MBR is when I put the drive in as a second drive on my windows computer, i can no longer boot up the primary drive (I have tried all sorts of boot options in the Bios and can't get it to work).

Thanks in advance.

4 Reply by class413

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Re: Can't Rescue Data : Failed creating read-only view

Concerning photos you took using a modern digital camera, I think you could try to use EXIF information that is stored in the photo files, to sort them by date, so you can be helped to find subjects.
Perhaps, some similar tag content is stored in Office documents too (although few people use them regularly).

About the MBR:
To erase the MBR is rather easy, we have just to write zero's on the 1st sector of the hard drive device, or the the first 512 bytes of the same device. This can be done with the dd command from the Linux terminal, with root rights. The command is something like this:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdx[/color] bs=512 count=1

where /dev/sdx is the device name for the drive in question. It can be /dev/sda, /dev/sdb, /dev/sdc ... Please, be careful to verify this name, otherwise you will erase the wrong drive.

However, this is a very special sector of the drive, because it stores not only the boot code but also the partition table, i.e. the table where the operating system looks to know how many partitions are on the drive space and where to look for the start point of each. So, it isn't advised to erase the MBR.
An alternative would be to delete the first part of the MBR, before the partition data. The command would be:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdx[/color] bs=446 count=1

same remark on /dev/sdx.
I'm not sure if this will solve the problem you report. Furthermore, I can't understand it well. This is mostly used in case we want to reinstall an operating system from scratch, but then we don't look to preserve the data content of the hard drive. I think you have to investigate why your computer doesn't boot from another drive. Is there any other *bootable* hard drive installed in the computer? Is the boot selection in the BIOS setup menu well done? Did you try to change the SATA port where the disk is connected? Did you try to delete the "Boot" attribute from the primary partition?

If you just want to reuse the hard drive after erasing its content, then you can use the GParted command to "make a new partition table" on the drive, after that you can create one or more new (empty) partitions and copy your data in them from other drives or from any backup copies.

*** It is highly recommended to backup any important files before doing resize/move operations. ***