Recovering Failing Hard Drive From Ubuntu

  • Thread starter Robin
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Robin

Robin

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I need some urgent help, last night my laptop suddenly froze, blue screened and now won't boot. Running the HDD tests from the start up diagnostics I got a fail on the Long Self Test code 305. Basically it means the drive is about to die.

I have booted into a Ubuntu Live USB and hooked up an external to get all my stuff off the laptops HDD, the drive seems to identify fine and I can see all the folders etc but I can't see my name in the Users folder on the drive, it's just Administrator, Public, etc.

This means I can't get into my downloads and documents folder where lots of the stuff is... how do I access them? Is there another pathway I can try? I don't understand why they aren't shown.

Could someone help. I'm living on borrowed time! :scared:
 
There is no reason a folder would just disappear. Either the Administrator is actually you, or your user folder is for some reason somewhere else.

Do you have a PC that you can add the drive to and browse? It may be helpful to look over it while not in a linux environment.
 
DQuaN
There is no reason a folder would just disappear. Either the Administrator is actually you, or your user folder is for some reason somewhere else.

Do you have a PC that you can add the drive to and browse? It may be helpful to look over it while not in a linux environment.
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I think I might be the Administrator because when I click the desktop folder I can see the files which were on my desktop but there are no 'My Documents' or 'My Downloads' folders in the Administrator folder. My username is Robin.

To get the hard drive into a windows environment I would have to remove it from the laptop and put it in a caddy (the caddy which is currently holding the rescue HDD!), would browsing it in a Windows environment make any difference to how visible the folders are on there?
 
Probably not but it's worth a try. Like I said, folders don't just dissapear, even if the drive is failing.

Did you have any custom paths for dynamic links for your Documents?
 
DQuaN
Probably not but it's worth a try. Like I said, folders don't just dissapear, even if the drive is failing.

Did you have any custom paths for dynamic links for your Documents?
Click to expand...

I will have to take a look, I might get lucky and find one somewhere but it's bizarre that I can't find the My Downloads folder anywhere in C:/. I thought it would be at C:/Users/Robin but if I'm the admin who knows where it would be!

I could do a drive wide search for filenames I know are in the missing folder but I'm scared of stressing the drive with that kind of work. It's 500 GB and was pretty full when it went down.
 
@Robin.

Where is your hard drive mounted when you boot off the Live USB?

If it's (say) /mnt/hd then you can find all your stuff in /mnt/hd/home/Robin
 
BobK
@Robin.

Where is your hard drive mounted when you boot off the Live USB?

If it's (say) /mnt/hd then you can find all your stuff in /mnt/hd/home/Robin
Click to expand...

The directories in every Ubuntu window are clickable and not the traditional fully written pathways, can I change this to see the path?

The hard drive is just listed as 500GB Hard Drive in the left hand pane of the Home window with an eject symbol next to it.

EDIT - I think I found how to get the normal pathways... www.howtogeek.com/189777/how-to-show-the-location-entry-instead-of-the-breadcrumb-bar-in-nautilus-in-ubuntu-14.04/
 
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DQuaN
Weird. What was the computer name?
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It was the name of the laptop, something like Pavilion. I didn't originally setup this laptop but it's not a HP stock install (has been clean installed in the past). The user account was called Robin and that was what was shown on Start Menu etc and I think it had admin privileges.

@BobK I can't change the pathways from breadcrumbs to long path, doesn't seem to work on Ubuntu 15. When I right click the HDD is says something about inode/directory
 
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I FOUND IT!!!!!

OK this is a weird one.... It was located in C:/Users/Administrator/Favourites/Downloads

That's the last place I would ever look and I only stumbled on it because I thought I would try every folder in every directory.

Anyone know why it's in there? What could have caused this in the past because I never had to go into favourites when that laptop was working fine?
 
Now that I can get my stuff off I need to think about how to fix the laptop. If everything can be read from the disk why does the BIOS diagnostic report it as toast?

upload_2015-12-18_15-5-53.png


Would you trust a HDD again reporting this? I'm going to try the Windows 7 CD see if I can repair the install. If I do need a new one I want to get a reasonable SSD.

Thank you for all the replies @DQuaN and @BobK , I really appreciate the assistance. 👍
 
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Are you able to see the disk space utilization in Linux? Are you sure the drive just doesn't have any free space? I'm not sure what Windows would do if it suddenly didn't have any free space.
 
acascianelli
Are you able to see the disk space utilization in Linux? Are you sure the drive just doesn't have any free space? I'm not sure what Windows would do if it suddenly didn't have any free space.
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When it says 'full' the term is misleading, if you Google it you will see the error means the drive is starting to fail. Although it has worked so far for me getting stuff off it.
 
Robin.
When it says 'full' the term is misleading, if you Google it you will see the error means the drive is starting to fail. Although it has worked so far for me getting stuff off it.
Click to expand...

Have you tried checking the smart data from within linux? I think the command is smartctl.
 
acascianelli
Have you tried checking the smart data from within linux? I think the command is smartctl.
Click to expand...

I will give it a go after I have safely got all my files off. It's a Seagate drive and I might try their diagnostic tool as well.
 

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