this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2024
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(Solved!) Data recovery, point me in the right direction? (lemm.ee)
submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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I've been on Linux for close to a year but I'm still kinda a newbie and the past 40 something hours have been really testing me.

I had my 4tb backup HDD break on me in a strange way, it still mounts and at first glance seems to still be working, But KDE throws an error saying the drive won't mount (even tho it is?) and I'm unable to copy files from it using Gui or Term commands it just freezes up without throwing an error message, It also freezes after using Ls more than once or twice on it.

Now last night I used clonezilla to copy the entire drive to a portable HDD of the same size, now that drive is giving me the same issue. So I'm assuming it's a software issue and not the drive itself? at least for the 2nd drive.

I already tried fsck to no avail and I'm abit stumped on where to go from there. Any help would be great!

Edit: Should also add the drives EXT4

Update: At the directions of a Gentoo nerd I know. I'm currently in a live boot of Ubuntu copying files to another drive and they seem to be working so far.

Part of the issue might with my few month old install of Endeavour, But I'm still gonna replace the drive. I already paid for a new on.

Another Update: I was able to recover the majority of my files to other drives by running an Ubuntu live USB and copying them over on that, So seems something on my main install was preventing me from copying files? Either way the drive itself is still done for and I got two others on the way to replace it, I've also reinstalled my distro as I was having some bugs with it anyway.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago

it still mounts and at first glance seems to be working

What makes you say that?

Show us the output of things like lsblk, mount and cat /etc/fstab to give us a fuller picture

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Stop trying to write to it, such as with fsck. Shut down the system, boot from another drive, and mount the flaky drive read-only. See if you can get any important files off it. If that doesn't work it starts getting weirder. Also, is the drive making any weird noises? What is the output of smartctl -a? Do you have important stuff on the drive that is not backed up? Do you have stuff on the drive that is highly confidential and not encrypted?

Best case is that you have backups and your drive is encrypted or uninteresting, so if it is failing then you can warranty it and restore from backups. Are you ok for that if it comes to it?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

It's not the boot drive and is unmounted at the moment

Any data recovery I'm trying at the moment is from the portable drive I cloned the main one from. And yes I got actually important stuff backed in multiple places, it's mostly media and stuff like game saves I'm trying to get back.

I'm actually in a live boot rn copying as many files off it to other drives (and it seems to be working unlike on my main install?)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

External drive? Is it a usb drive? If it is you might be best pulling out the drive and connecting it to a sata port. The mount as read only and do what everyone else suggests

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

My main backup drive is internal/Sata but I cloned it to an external USB one after I started noticing issues with it

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I'd focus on KDE here, it sounds like the gui auto mount service is barfing for some reason. Does the drive mount normally when you boot to the CLI and try to mount it by hand?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I am using fstab to mount my drives not KDEs mounting solution as I've had issues with that in the past.

But I still get a popup in the bottom corner saying the drive couldn't mount

And yeah even went mounting and going through the drive just using CLI it still freezes up, I dunno if there's a way to get an error log from Ls? Or something similar

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

get an error log from Ls? Or something similar

You have just been told that

in the other comment

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

My bad I'm reading this all off my phone rn while using a live boot on my PC

When I tried using Ls on my main install it just froze without giving any output, I even left it for over an hour and it didn't budge.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Do you have that drive mounted in Steam as a library? I have had a similar issue with an NTFS formatted drive

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I don't have any NTFS drives and didn't use that drive for Steam games

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Oh okey! I wonder what could have went wrong then. I'm glad you found a workaround to your problem