Nataliek Posted July 12, 2011 Share Posted July 12, 2011 When I try to scan an Iomega eGO external drive formatted as NTFS I get the message Unable to Read MFT. Other software can read the hard drive. Recuva can read my C drive and other external drives. Has anyone any ideas? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators DennisD Posted July 12, 2011 Moderators Share Posted July 12, 2011 Hi Nataliek, and welcome to Piriform. You could try running "chckdsk" on the drive, although I'm not sure as to whether it would fix a corrup MFT ... http://vlaurie.com/computers2/Articles/chkdsk.htm Alternatively, you may be able to fix the MFT with "TestDisk" ... Repair An NTFS MFT The MFT (Master File Table) is sometimes corrupted. If Microsoft's Checkdisk (chkdsk) failed to repair the MFT, run TestDisk. In the Advanced menu, select your NTFS partition, choose Boot, then Repair MFT. TestDisk will compare the MFT and MFT mirror (its backup). If the MFT is damaged, it will try to repair the MFT using the backup. If the MFT backup is damaged, it will use the main MFT. http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Advanced_NTFS_Boot_and_MFT_Repair It's sister program "PhotoRec" will recover data from the drive if the fix is unsuccessful. http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec TestDisk Documentation: PhotoRec Documentation: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nataliek Posted July 12, 2011 Author Share Posted July 12, 2011 The situation is more complicated than I originally reported. While Recuva is reporting that it cannot read the MFT, I can launch Powerdesk and this has no difficulty telling me what is on the disk. Ir I had a corrupt MFT I would have expected Powerdesk to give problems. Another bit of reocery software (I forget which) had no problem analysing the disk and telling me what files are recoverable. However it was only when I asked them to recover the files that I discovered that they wanted rather a lot of money from me. In view of the fact that other software appears to run OK, might this not be a coding bug in Recova. But I will try running CHKDSK. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
redhawk Posted July 12, 2011 Share Posted July 12, 2011 Recuva doesn't handle damaged or missing partition information very well i.e. RAW drives. This is a big disappointment since Recuva is free and other programs that can want your money. As Dennis suggested run chdsk.exe /f, then TestDisk and see if you can salvage anything. Richard S. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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