It's going to be a long one...

[Lerner17]

I'm not even sure if I'm posting this in the correct thread, but here goes:

I personally have a desktop with a triple boot system consisting of Fedora Core 13, Windows Vista Business, and Windows Server 2008. However, Fedora isn't doing what I want it to do so I'm running a live Ubuntu disc. Here's what I want to do.

My wife's uncle sent me a hard drive that's basically dead and I'm attempting data recovery on it. It spins in an enclosure, Ubuntu can see it, but when I try to access it to either back up his documents to another external or a DVD I get the following error:

Could not display "/media/HP_PAVILLION".
Error: Error starting file "/media/HP_PAVILLION": input/output error
Please select another viewer and try again

When I try to simply copy and paste onto one of my NTFS partitions or my other external hard drive I get a different error:

There was an error copying the file into /
media\*Hard drive name*

and when I click Show more details I get "Can't open mountable file"

Is this a lost cause or does anyone have suggestions as to how I can rectify the situation?

Regards,

Lerner17

[fooman]

have you looked here:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DataRecovery

[Lerner17]

Ok, so it seems as if ddrescue is my best bet. Thank you for the link. Is the package already included on the Live disc or should I just install Ubuntu over my Fedora (never been a fan anyway...) and install the package from there?

[Lerner17]

I forgot to mention the appreciation for the quick reply...

[Lerner17]

So now I have a new issue. Ubuntu claims the disk was never removed properly in Windows, but I never connected it to a Windows system. In fact, Windows won't even acknowledge the fact that the disk is there. The message I get is a long one but essentially boils down to running chkdsk /f in Windows and rebooting twice. I did that but continue to get the same error. I'm almost certain it's a hardware fault. Is there any way around this?

[Lerner17]

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