[Ubuntu] How To Fix A Corrupted Windows NTFS Filesystem With Ubuntu

source: http://askubuntu.com/questions/59064/how-to-run-a-checkdisk

How many of you have had that sinking feeling as your PC boots up? You know, a slight niggle in the back of your mind that says “this is taking longer than usual” before Windows drops dead in front of you, and refuses to play ball.Me too, and much of the time the original Windows CD/DVD/USB you used in your original install can’t fix the problem. You need something else. Something like a whole operating system, either installed on a separate partition or in Live CD/USB format. Enter Ubuntu!

There’s a good few reasons to have Ubuntu on a CD or USB stick somewhere in a draw. It’s free, to start with. You don’t need to install it to use it, and it’s great for accessing a butchered Windows partition ““ even if it’s just to get your precious documents back before a format.
When it comes to fixing your broken Windows install then Ubuntu has its uses there too. If you happen to break your registry or master boot record, then fear not ““ all is not lost. This technique should work on any Ubuntu-based Linux distributions.

Download, Install & Boot Ubuntu

Those of you who already have a dual-boot Ubuntu and Windows machine can skip this step.
If you’ve not got a Live USB stick then you’re going to need to get hold of one. UNetbootin is a useful tool which enables you to create a USB stick with a bootable version of your favourite open source operating system preloaded. If you’d prefer to use a CD, download an Ubuntu disk image and burn it with ImgBurn.

If you’re dual-booting, then this is a simple step of choosing Ubuntu over Windows at boot. For Live USB sticks and CDs you’re going to need to enter the BIOS setup as your PC boots (usually by pressing F2 or Del) and arrange your boot devices to prioritize your USB device or CD drive to boot before your main hard drive.
If you’ve done everything correctly you’ll see the UNetbootin bootloader appear. From here you’ll want to boot directly into the operating system. After a minute or two you’ll see the desktop appear, and we’re ready to begin.

Fixing A Corrupted Windows NTFS Partition

Luckily you can schedule an NTFS consistency check within Ubuntu to attempt to repair your tattered Windows partition, but you’re going to need to install a couple of things. It is worth mentioning that this should work with any NTFS drive that refuses to mount in Ubuntu too. Open a Terminal window by clicking Applications, Accessories and then Terminal.
First install NTFS-3G by typing this command:

sudo apt-get install ntfs-3g

Enter your password and hit Enter on your keyboard. Next install NTFSProgs in the same way:

sudo apt-get install ntfsprogs

Now with both of those tools at your disposal, you can set about fixing Windows. First locate your Windows partition. In the Terminal type:

sudo fdisk -l

You’re looking for an entry that looks like this:

/dev/sda2   *         638       12312    93773824    7  HPFS/NTFS

The important bit is the /dev/sda2 which tells us where the Windows partition is mounted. HPFS/NTFS lets us know that the partition is a Microsoft Windows formatted device, and that little star denotes that this is a bootable partition.
So in my case /dev/sda2 means that Windows is on sda (my internal hard drive) and that it’s partition 2 that I want to play around with.
Armed with this information you want to use NTFSProgs to attempt to fix the partition. In your Terminal window type:

sudo ntfsfix /dev/<device name>

Replace <device name> with your Windows partition (e.g. /dev/sda2) and enter your password followed by Enter. Your drive will now be mounted, checked for consistency and any errors found should be fixed. Restart your PC to assess the situation, if all goes well you’ll see Windows.

Fixing A Corrupt Master Boot Record

If you’ve got a problem with Windows’ oh-so-important boot record then you can also fix that from within Ubuntu too. Assuming you’ve already booted into Ubuntu, open up Terminal and install lilo by typing:

sudo apt-get install lilo

Enter your password to proceed with the installation, you’ll get a few warnings pop-up along the way.
If you followed the first part of this tutorial you’ll know which partition Windows is installed on, if you missed it type:

sudo fdisk -l

Find the HPFS/NTFS partition that relates to your Windows install, and type:

sudo lilo -M /dev/ mbr

Replace <device name> with your Windows partition (e.g. /dev/sda2) and hit Enter. Ubuntu will attempt to restore your master boot record. You’ll probably want to restart your machine now, just make sure you take any Live CD/USB devices out as you do.

Conclusion

If you’re still having problems with a Windows install, and you’ve tried everything then don’t forget you can mount the partition and rescue as much data as you think you’ll need. Using the terminal, enter:

sudo mkdir /media/windows

sudo ntfs-3g -o force,rw /dev/<device name> /media/windows

Replace <device name> with your Windows partition location and the drive should pop-up on your desktop.

Has Ubuntu saved your bacon recently? Do you dual-boot with Windows? Thinking about making a Live CD just in case? Let us know below.

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source:http://wmarkito.wordpress.com/2010/12/29/how-to-fix-mftmirr-does-not-match-mft-record-0/

How to fix ‘$MFTMirr does not match $MFT (record 0)’

Sometimes, when you are executing a file transfer between your computer hard drive and an external drive and your computer shutdown for some reason (in my case, no battery/ac power) it’s pretty common to get some errors on external drives that uses NTFS as they file system.
The most common message is:

Error mounting: mount exited with exit code 13: $MFTMirr does not match $MFT (record 0).
Failed to mount ‘/dev/sdb3′: 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.

One workaround for this issue is to do as the message says, boot on Windows and try to use the awesome NTFS tool that Windows offer. But a perfect solution for a Linux users is to use the ntfsprogs utility.
UPDATE: On some recent Linux releases, you need to install ntfs-3g utilties.  Try sudo apt-get install ntfs-3g or download from http://www.tuxera.com/community/ntfs-3g-download/

ntfsprogs is a suite of NTFS utilities based around a shared library. The tools are available for free and come with full source code.

• mkntfs: Create an NTFS volume on a partition
• ntfscat: Print a file on the standard output
• ntfsclone: Efficiently backup/restore a volume at the sector level
• ntfscluster: Given a cluster, or sector, find the file
• ntfsfix: Forces Windows to check NTFS at boot time
• ntfsinfo: Dump a file’s attributes, completely
• ntfslabel: Display or set a volume’s label
• ntfslib: Move all the common code into a shared library
• ntfsls: List directory contents
• ntfsresize: Resize an NTFS volume
• ntfsundelete: Find files that have been deleted and recover them
• ntfswipe: Write zeros over the unused parts of the disk
• ntfsdefrag: Defragment files, directories and the MFT
• ntfsck: Perform consistancy checks on a volume
• nttools: Command-line tools to view/change an offline NTFS volume, e.g. ntfscp, ntfsgrep, ntfstouch, ntfsrm, ntfsrmdir, ntfsmkdir
• ntfsdiskedit: Walk the tree of NTFS ondisk structures (and alter them)

Be careful with these utilities, they might damage the filesystem, or your hard disk !

With ntfsprogs installed (sudo apt-get install ntfsprogs) you should execute the following commands in a terminal:

sudo ntfsfix /dev/partitionName

After this command you should expect the following output:

~$ sudo ntfsfix /dev/sdb3
Mounting volume... FAILED
Attempting to correct errors...
Processing $MFT and $MFTMirr...
Reading $MFT... OK
Reading $MFTMirr... OK
Comparing $MFTMirr to $MFT... FAILED
Correcting differences in $MFTMirr record 0...OK
Processing of $MFT and $MFTMirr completed successfully.
Setting required flags on partition... OK
Going to empty the journal ($LogFile)... OK
NTFS volume version is 3.1.
NTFS partition /dev/sdb3 was processed successfully.

After this step you should be able to access your external drive partition as usual, mount or use nautilus to access your files.