NTFS recovery (for Linux if possible) (similar to ReiserFS rebuildtree)

Question

I had a broken disc with a 40GB NTFS partition and was able to recover most of it. I only lost about 2.5MB at about 20 different places.

Now, when I mount it under Windows, I am not able to access "Documents and Settings" anymore. It says it is broken. Windows chkdsk also does not help. When I mount it under Linux, it says something similar.

All other directories (including "Windows") are just fine to access. But all the important data are in the documents directory.

Now I am wondering about my options. On Linux, if something similar happens for example on a ReiserFS partition, I can do something like ReiserFS' rebuildtree option which will work in almost all cases, even if very much data is corrupted. Is something similar for NTFS possible?

Thanks, Albert

Answer 1

You didn't mention what the original OS was. You may be able to get in using the short file name.

In an elevated command prompt, assuming F: is the drive in question, type:

dir f:\ /x

This should show you the short file name, which is usually "DOCUME~1". See if you can get into it by typing:

f:
cd \DOCUME~1

Good luck!

Answer 2

You may want to look at scrounge, which does file recovery on NTFS partitions. The ntfsfix program from the NTFS tools may help too.