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I've been trying furiously for about 2 to 3 weeks to get the data off this drive. And I've had lots of learning while I've done it. However I still am with no data. I have used SafeCopy to make a copy of the drive. Which I then tried to mount the image. Now, the first time I did this. I did the full drive (All 6 Partitions) and I got the offset and the -o loop in and have used about every mount command I can find. However the furthest I got was this message.
NTFS signature is missing.
Failed to mount '/dev/loop0': Invalid argument
The device '/dev/loop0' doesn't seem to have a valid NTFS.
Maybe the wrong device is used? Or the whole disk instead of a partition (e.g. /dev/sda, not /dev/sda1)? Or the other way around?
Now after reading around, I ended up reading that basically I'm dumb and should have just used safecopy on the partition I wanted. So this morning. I ran safecopy again on the second partition. However when mounting, I get the same message as before. At this point, I have a .img file of the second partition on the drive. I'm worried I won't be able to run safecopy many more times on the drive (if at all since this last time was a struggle) so I hopefully can just repair this img file to let me mount it. If however I have to get the full image again, I will do so. Below are the last couple of commands and their output.
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EXTRA INFORMATION
I'm doing all this on a laptop I dedicate to this sort of thing. And I'm running Kali Linux 1.0.9a 64-Bit.
mount -o loop -t ntfs-3g /media/DBU/Devin2.img /mnt/tmp
NTFS signature is missing.
Failed to mount '/dev/loop0': Invalid argument
The device '/dev/loop0' doesn't seem to have a valid NTFS.
Maybe the wrong device is used? Or the whole disk instead of a
partition (e.g. /dev/sda, not /dev/sda1)? Or the other way around?
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I did try the above without adding the "-3g" and without the "-o loop" and its the same result.
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file /media/DBU/Devin2.img
/media/DBU/Devin2.img: ASCII text, with very long lines, with no line terminators
(When I did this on the full partition, I did not get that, it actually knew it had partitions)
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fdisk -l /media/DBU/Devin2.img
Disk /media/DBU/Devin2.img: 452.9 GB, 452919820288 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 55064 cylinders, total 884609024 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x62446142
Disk /media/DBU/Devin2.img doesn't contain a valid partition table
OK - whatever you do - DO NOT try to write to the drive, and maybe not even power it up anymore - give people here some time to read and understand your issue. – arch-abit – 2015-01-01T02:04:44.930
Drive: What is it, a hard drive or solid-state, or something else? Capacity? Drive: Is it MBR or GPT? Mount: How did you originally mount the drive? Internal SATA, USB, other?
-3g is to write to NTFS, again, do not use it on this drive! – arch-abit – 2015-01-01T02:16:01.797
Yeah, I have not plugged it in since the last safecopy. the drive is a Seagate Momentus 5400RPM, 500GB Hard Drive. I believe it is MBR Since it came with a Windows 7 Laptop. The drive struggles to mount normally when plugged in (Parted -l freezes for a while, file explorer sees the partitions but I can't do anything). I mounted it with a powered external enclosure (Its the only external reader I have that works well with safecopy). And thanks for the clarification on -3g. Will not use it again. – Tyler C – 2015-01-01T02:51:28.090
It is HDD and it is most likely an MBR, so there is a good chance it can be read and the data rescued - as long as the platters holding the data inside the drive are intact - unless you wrote to the drive during your rescue attempts. Some good news for you to start 2015 with - since you are 'furiously trying'. New year celebrations are about, so sit tight, and keep the drive off-line. – arch-abit – 2015-01-01T03:11:40.697
That would be amazing, and to clarify. I never specified to safecopy ntfs-g3. The only thing I used that on was the .img file I got from safecopy. So as long as safecopy --stage1 never writes to the drive we should be good. Also, thanks for responding during the holiday. – Tyler C – 2015-01-01T04:06:49.793