Copy video files from failing USB hard drive

[AndyT]

Hi,
I'm new to this forum (new to forums in general), but I'm reaching out for some help.
I've got a failing USB hard drive which has photos, music, videos from my phone and movies, previously was in use for my media server. I've tried various clone and recovery tools, the only one that's worked so far is TestDisk. I've managed to copy the majority of the photos which I'm grateful for however there are a ton of movies and more importantly videos of the family that I want to recover.
What I've noticed is that TestDisk will copy the files over but they are not the correct size, for example a movie file of 1Gb or more when copies is only a few hundred meg or less. Ones that I've played will work but they end after a couple of minutes.
I copied one particular TV show which was 994Mb but when copied was only 137Mb. I tried copying the same TV show again, this time it was 124Mb. Playing the file it ends after about 10 mins instead of being an hour long.

Has anyone got any suggestions on where I'm going wrong or how I can somehow restore and copy the movies?

Thanks in advance.

[cgrenier]

There may be bad sectors that prevent the copy to work correctly.
Try to clone the disk using ddrescue to a new empty disk as described in https://www.cgsecurity.org/testdisk.pdf
Once it's done, remove the original disk and try to access your data from the clone.

[AndyT]

Hi, I followed the process to create the clone, creating a USB stick with Fedora and got the disk to disk copy going. It was running for over 16 days and got to 85%, then I got an error which seems OS related.

Kernel panic - not syncing : Attempted to kill init! exitcode=0x0000000b

I had to reboot, but it seem I may need to recreate the Fedora USB as it would not boot.

I started Windows 10 instead as I was curious to see if the clone had worked at all, but I cannot access the drive, I'm being asked to format the drive.

As a bit more background with this issue, the failing hard drive is an external NTFS 4TB USB hard drive. It was originally connected to a Ubuntu server running Plex. Since it failed I've setup Windows 10 instead and have added a new internal 4TB hard drive which was set as the clone destination. I obviously don't want to format the drive.

Any advice? I noticed in the PDF the ddrutility section. Should I try this instead of the disk to disk copy?

Thanks

[recuperation]

I had to reboot, but it seem I may need to recreate the Fedora USB as it would not boot.

That might be due to a BIOS setting, maybe boot order or something else.
I don't see a reason for the "Fedora USB" being overwritten.

[AndyT]

Hi.

It's not the boot order, somehow the USB or the OS has become corrupted. When I try and boot I get the error

The media check is complete, the result is : FAIL.

I think though that this is a side issue. I can recreate the Fedora USB but its the disk to disk copy I need help with. Is there a way to access the drive without formatting and losing the data? Do I start again but this time try using ddrutility?
Any help welcome.

Thanks

[AndyT]

Hi,

As an update, when booting from the Fedora USB, I skipped the media check and Fedora started. I'm writing this update from Firefox within Fedora, so some progress
I'm going to read through the PDF and see if I can use TestDisk in Windows to recover the destination disk from the disk to disk copy. The disk is an internal drive, my D: drive used for data only (no OS). I've seen instructions on how to repair the boot sector on an NTFS disk, not sure if this is what I need as the computer does not boot from this disk and will not need to, but I'll see what I can work out. Again any guidance welcome.

Thanks

[AndyT]

Sorry for the flood of updates, but I managed to find some time to work on the and am making the most of it.
I tried rebuilding the boot sector, but this didn't work. It spent a while working through the disk looking for ... something ... but came back and reported the boot sector and backup boot sector as bad.

Disk /dev/sdb - 4000 GB / 3726 GiB - CHS 486401 255 63 Partition Start End Size in sectors
1 * HPFS - NTFS 0 32 33 60800 41 62 976752597 Boot sector
Status: Bad Backup boot sector
Status: Bad Sectors are identical. A valid NTFS Boot sector must be present in order to access
any data; even if the partition is not bootable.

Partition table type is Intel. Previously this was none.

Windows Disk Management reports the disk as RAW with 3 partitions. 465GB Primary partition, 1582GB unallocated, 1678 unallocated. These partitions are new since disk to disk copy. See attachment.

Disk Management.png (31.81 KiB) Viewed 3574 times

I really don't know what I'm doing or how to move forward. Tempted to start the drutility but since it took 16 days on disk to disk copy I'd like to see if there is anything I can first.

Thanks in advance.

[recuperation]

I started Windows 10 instead as I was curious to see if the clone had worked at all, but I cannot access the drive, I'm being asked to format the drive.

Once Windows 10 starts writing on your copy your copy is not a copy anymore and you can duplicate another 16 days with the risk of degrading a drive which may be in the process of dying.
If you want to play around with something play with a duplicate of your duplicate.

As a bit more background with this issue, the failing hard drive is an external NTFS 4TB USB hard drive. It was originally connected to a Ubuntu server running Plex.

This is information you should have stated right at the beginning of your thread.

Since it failed I've setup Windows 10 instead and have added a new internal 4TB hard drive which was set as the clone destination. I obviously don't want to format the drive.

"Setting up Windows 10" is not necessary for the duplication process as described above.

I tried rebuilding the boot sector, but this didn't work. It spent a while working through the disk looking for ... something ... but came back and reported the boot sector and backup boot sector as bad.

There is no need to rebuild anything as you already managed to copy files from your broken driven using Testdisk.

Using a logfile with ddrescue allows you to interrupt and continue your duplication process.
Do not connect your broken drive or its copy to a Windows machine anymore.
Try to rescue as much as you can. If file fragments are located in the missing 15% of the drive where you recovered 85% you won't recover those or getting shortened files or files that are impossible to open.

When being unhappy with the result of Testdisk you can run Photorec on your duplicate afterwards from a Linux system.

[recuperation]

.

[AndyT]

Thanks for your quick replies, really appreciated.

Point taken on missing out information at the start of the thread, with that in mind let me give you the full background in case I've not mentioned anything relevant.

I had a plex media server running on a Ubuntu Server VM (ESXi host). All the media, photos, music, movies, were stored on an external 4TB NTFS USB Hard Drive which was attached to the host machine and mounted on the Ubuntu Server. This all worked fine for a long while, but then I noticed movies not starting and when checking I found whole directories were no longer available. I removed the USB drive from the server and connected to a Windows 10 laptop to see if I could access the missing directories, I couldn't. I ran chkdsk which attempted to repair the drive. Afterwards I could access some of the missing directories and so I tried copying the files. Copying would hang each time it came across a corrupt file. Opening directories was slow but would work eventually. It seemed if a photo had a thumbnail then it was ok to copy, so I was manually copying photos a few at a time.

I decided to move away from Ubuntu Server as it was an effort to maintain, so I took the drives out of the PC and put in another and installed Windows 10. This is going to be my new media server moving forward. I got myself an internal 4TB drive learning the lesson from using an external USB drive which was not meant to be on 24/7. This new internal drive is where I'm now trying to copy my files to.

I tried various tools to try and copy the files or clone the drive only having any success with Testdisk. As explained it copied the photos ok, even copying the corrupt files and sometimes recovering them it seems, so I'm happy with that. Those recovered files are now on another USB hard drive freeing up the internal 4TB drive.

So I'm now at the point where I tried the disk to disk copy, using Fedora on a USB stick in the PC that was my media server. I did use a logfile, so in theory then I can continue the disk to disk copy and hopefully complete it, I will do this.
So, assuming the disk to disk copy completes ok, what are my next steps? Should I be able to access this drive from Windows 10? You've said not to connect to a Windows machine anymore, is this just while the copy is not complete?
You mentioned running Photorec on the drive. I tried this before without success but this was from Windows. I can try from Fedora maybe? I'm pretty much out of hard drives now, so I don't have another drive to copy to, certainly not another 4TB drive but I might be able to free up a 500mb drive. I had hoped cloning from the failing USB Hard drive to the internal Hard drive would be the solution.

Thanks for the advice so far.