1 Topic by dimitri

  • dimitri
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  • Registered: 2017-02-01
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Topic: Messed up NTFS partition trying to resize

Hi,

I just tried to resize an NTFS partition containing Windows 7 and got an error halfway trough:

GParted 0.25.0 --enable-libparted-dmraid --enable-online-resize

Libparted 3.2

Check and repair file system (ntfs) on /dev/sda2  00:00:00    ( ERROR )
       
calibrate /dev/sda2  00:00:00    ( SUCCESS )
       
path: /dev/sda2 (partition)
start: 206848
end: 395440227
size: 395233380 (188.46 GiB)
check file system on /dev/sda2 for errors and (if possible) fix them  00:00:00    ( ERROR )
       
ntfsresize -i -f -v /dev/sda2  00:00:00    ( ERROR )
       
ntfsresize v2015.3.14AR.1 (libntfs-3g)
Failed to load runlist for $MFT/$DATA.
highest_vcn = 0x70, last_vcn - 1 = 0x638bf
Failed to load $MFT: Input/output error
ERROR(5): Opening '/dev/sda2' as NTFS failed: Input/output error
NTFS is inconsistent. Run chkdsk /f on Windows then reboot it TWICE!
The usage of the /f parameter is very IMPORTANT! No modification was
and will be made to NTFS by this software until it gets repaired.

Now I cannot boot into Windows any more and I don't have a recovery disk. Is there any way to fix this from Ubuntu or Gparted Live?

2 Reply by gedakc

  • gedakc
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Re: Messed up NTFS partition trying to resize

From the log file I can see that the command that failed is one that tries to determine the theoretically smallest shrunken filesystem size.  This operation ran into trouble reading through the file system due to an "input/output" error.

Typically "input/output" errors arise due to a hardware issue.  The hardware issue can be as serious as a failing drive, or as simple as a loose cable.  You can use the "dmesg" command in GNU/Linux after the error is reported to see more details regarding if this is indeed a hardware error with the device. The device name will be something like "/dev/sda".

First, I highly recommend cloning the drive.  That way if any of the recovery efforts make things worse then at least you will be able to restore back to this point.

You might try booting from GNU/Linux live media to mount and read the data off the drive and copy it to separate backup media.

To try to repair the file system, I recommend you locate a copy of a Windows recovery disk.  Usually the installation media will also act as a recovery disk.  Use this run "chkdsk /f /r" on the drive.

Otherwise to read the data from the damaged file system you might try PhotoRec to scan the surface of the disk looking for file types it recognizes.  Note that this is an onerous, time-consuming process and the file names are not maintained.