Serious hard drive problem

Cybermancer · 26 Dec 2015

So I tried turning on my Asus G73JH laptop today, and I got the Asus screen followed by just a black screen... it stays that way indefinitely. Tried rebooting many times without the battery to no avail. I can access bios, and already tried resetting to optimized defaults but it did nothing. So I booted up with knoppix to try and diagnose the problem... My top priority is backing up everything on my hard drive to my external one, cause I have a ton of extremely important work & school stuff on there. However it won't mount my HDD (sda2) for some reason. Here is the error I get

Error mounting system-managed device /dev/sda2: Command-line `mount "/media/sda2"' exited with non-zero exit status 13: ntfs_attr_pread_i: ntfs_pread failed: Input/output error
Failed to read hiberfil.sys: Input/output error
Failed to mount '/dev/sda2': Input/output error
NTFS is either inconsistent, or there is a hardware fault, or it's a
SoftRAID/FakeRAID hardware. In the first case run chkdsk /f on Windows
then reboot into Windows twice. The usage of the /f parameter is very
important! If the device is a SoftRAID/FakeRAID then first activate
it and mount a different device under the /dev/mapper/ directory, (e.g.
/dev/mapper/nvidia_eahaabcc1). Please see the 'dmraid' documentation
for more details

How can I find out exactly what the problem is? Is there any way I can run a chkdsk or system restore? Can data recovery software salvage an I/O'd disk? I've been thinking about disassembling the laptop, cleaning it out, and seeing if everythings connected properly. What else can I try?

Any help is welcome

jumanji · 26 Dec 2015

Hi Cybermancer,

Welcome to SevenForums.

Don't try to dismantle your laptop and take out the HDD. As far as possible an attempt should me made to try non-invasive methods first.

On a google search I found this thread where the OP faisal2 had a more or less similar problem and was able to successfully enter Safe mode and copy all data using Windows Repair Disk.

[SOLVED] Can't mount HD

Of particular interest to you should be post #7 by coffeecat suggesting Windows repair using Windows Windows Repair Disk and post #7 dated 23 Sep 1013 and the Op's post #10 dated 24Sep 2013 giving a thumbs up.

Unfortunately I am not well versed in running Windows Repair Disk - I have that repair disk tucked in somewhere but had never used it :) - and hope someone else well-versed can go through the referenced thread and advise you if you have any further doubts on using it. What all I can understand is that the OP did a Windows Repair. Ask further questions on it if any to catch their attention.

Good luck.

Cybermancer · 26 Dec 2015

I can't access safemode or windows repair disk. Pressing F8 at start up does nothing.

Right now I'm considering transferring all the uncorrupted files from my HD to an external one using testdisk, lzip recovery, and ddrescue. I'm just trying to figure out exactly how this all works before I attempt anything.

Then if that's successful I might try using these geek squad recovery disk's that came with the laptop.

ThrashZone · 26 Dec 2015

Hi and welcome to SevenForums,
What tweaking did you do exactly ?

jumanji · 26 Dec 2015

If you want to use ddrescue please read through this thread. Best method/tool for cloning a failing HDD for Data Recovery?

We have had atleast three success stories using ddrescue , Those are all referenced there and you can read those OPs' threads too.

External hard disk unaccessible

Cant access partition, slow system & file record segment unreadable.

Cybermancer · 26 Dec 2015

ThrashZone said:

Hi and welcome to SevenForums,
What tweaking did you do exactly ?

I've never touched the hardware or messed with overclocking if that's what you mean.

ThrashZone · 26 Dec 2015

Hi
Well all you originally say is you "tuned your asus computer" so please elaborate on what exactly you did ?

jumanji · 26 Dec 2015

He said "turning on" :)

Cybermancer · 26 Dec 2015

jumanji said:

If you want to use ddrescue please read through this thread. Best method/tool for cloning a failing HDD for Data Recovery?

We have had atleast three success stories using ddrescue , Those are all referenced there and you can read those OPs' threads too.

External hard disk unaccessible

Cant access partition, slow system & file record segment unreadable.

Thanks, looking over them right now.

Cybermancer · 26 Dec 2015

Ok I opened a terminal on the ddrescue folder and after rooting entered ddrescue -d -f -r3 /dev/sda2 /dev/sdc1 recovery.log

So is this pretty much all there is to it?