Data Recovery and Disk Utilities Forum @R-TT

The situation here: MFT (master file table) of an external hard disk (NTFS) is damaged, MFT mirror, too and there seems to be no program which can repair MFT so trying to recover files from this disk (about 2 TB) seems to be the only possible solution (the disk itself is good, shown with a letter in several programs etc., too but Windows just cannot access it, calls it RAW etc.)

So I tried R-Studio but even a first scan of the disk is not possible, it just says "Disk read error" and "Invalid function" on every sector of the disk (I let it run for 1 or 2 hours) and nothing more can be done so this is really all I can do with R-Studio in this situation ? MFT problems may be rare (first time here in decades and no idea why this happened) but R-Studio does less than I expected unfortunately, it just can not scan a disk (and search for files on it) when it can not detect a valid file system ?

First, look at the SMART parameters of the disk, because the disk hardware seems to be damaged.

I think that the disk is okay technically, only some months old and 2 or 3 drive testing programs said so, too, I think that the main problem by far is just this damaged MFT

I tried 2 other programs for partiton respective file recovery so far and they began scanning at least, I stopped because of estimated scan time about 2 days, external disk with 3 tb unfortunately and quick scans do not work of course but deep or thorough scans started in these programs (in R-Studio, too but it showed disk read errors from the first sector on and for the the next 2 or 3 hours for every scanned sector and I really cannot imagine that all sectors on the disk are bad)

Will make another try tomorrow, in general it can be said that R-Studio should be able to scan a disk (and show files for recovery later hopefully) even with a damaged MFT and when the disk is shown as RAW/not accessible by Windows itself ?

To get better results, you need to get a better read of the damaged sectors. This likely will require a hardware recovery imager and possibly physical repair. I suggest you contact a professional data recovery lab if you want to get the best recovery results possible.

merula wrote:(in R-Studio, too but it showed disk read errors from the first sector on and for the the next 2 or 3 hours for every scanned sector and I really cannot imagine that all sectors on the disk are bad)

Those errors are not from R-Studio itself, they are from the system that cannot read the disk.
The log will be helpful to understand the problem.

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Those errors are not from R-Studio itself..
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Okay, this sounds quite interesting, another try in 1 or 2 days, not so much time at the moment and fortunately it is only an external disk (but with about 2 tb data I would not like to lose if possible)

merula wrote:>
Those errors are not from R-Studio itself..
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Okay, this sounds quite interesting, another try in 1 or 2 days, not so much time at the moment and fortunately it is only an external disk (but with about 2 tb data I would not like to lose if possible)

R-Studio interacts with the drive through the system, and all messages related to the drive are actually from the system. Maybe, these are some problems with the drivers?