NTFS drive wont mount - "unknown filesystem"?

[David McNally]

>From what sdavmor and Preston said, it seems as though I should plug
it into a Windows machine and run chkdsk on it. I do have an old XP
machine that still works properly, so I suppose I'll try it on that. I
suppose I need to go into Start - Accessories and find chkdsk in there
somewhere. Probably not too hard.

If I do that, about how long should the chkdsk take? It's a 700 GB
hard drive, with about 600 GB used. Will it need to run overnight?

Thanks.

On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 6:33 PM, Preston Hagar <prestonh at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 5:11 PM, David McNally <david3333333 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> Hi again.
>>
>> Looks like I shouldn't try formatting to NTFS, considering that I
>> still need the data on the hard drive.
>>
>> I tried what Preston said, and this happened:
>>
>> david at david-desktop:~$ sudo ntfsfix /dev/sdf1
>> [sudo] password for david:
>> Mounting volume... Failed to startup volume: Invalid argument.
>> FAILED
>> Attempting to correct errors... FAILED
>> Failed to startup volume: Invalid argument.
>> Volume is corrupt. You should run chkdsk.
>> david at david-desktop:~$
>>
>> Not really sure what to do now. It does say that I should run chkdsk.
>> Anyone know how to do that exactly?
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> David McNally
>> david3333333 at gmail.com
>> Linux Kernel 2.6.31-17-generic
>>
>
>  Usually when a drive is in this state, only a windows check disk will save
> it.  If you have a Windows machine available, I would recommend connecting
> the drive to it, going to My Computer, right-clicking the drive, go to
> Properties, then the Tools tab, then Check Now in the error checking section
> (that is for Win XP, it may be some where a little different for Vista or
> 7).  Make sure to check the "Automatically fix file system errors"  Once you
> are done, make sure to either shut Windows down completely, or right-click
> the drive in My Computer and click Eject to before removing it.
>
> If you don't have a Windows computer around anymore you can either download
> the Ultimate Boot CD http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ burn it, boot to it, and
> run one of the check disk utilities there (there are several and they are
> kind of hit or miss)  They also don't always recognize USB or SATA devices,
> so you may have a little trouble with it.  Another option would be to boot
> to a Windows CD and go to the recovery console and try chkdsk /r
>
> Honestly though, the easiest solution (if the NTFS file system can be saved)
> would be to hook it up to a Windows machine and let it try to fix it.  Once
> you get it fixed, I would try to find a way to get the data off and reformat
> using ext3 or another Linux file system.  You could possibly just copy your
> most important files off, or split them across several other hard drives, or
> shrink the NTFS partition where it only has a few hundred MB free and then
> create another ext3 partition on the same drive and move some of the data
> that way.
>
> Anyway, good luck.
>
> Preston
>
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>



-- 
David McNally
david3333333 at gmail.com
Linux Kernel 2.6.31-17-generic