Accessing HDs through Ubuntu

[haxxorpoop]

A portion of my hard drive has recently died, and I've managed to boot into my Ubuntu live CD disk to access the internet and such. I no longer can boot to Windows, as it seems some very important system files are corrupt. However, the whole hard drive is not dead, and I'd like to save whatever data I can. When I go to the Disks utility in Ubuntu, and click the Hard Drive with the Windows install on it (acutally, any NTFS-formatted drive), I am not able to browse the drive, as it's "inaccessible". When I try to enable it, nothing really happens.

What is the best way for me to be able to get my stuff in order to copy it to another working drive that I have? I've tried the Recovery Console, except it cant detect the Windows install, so it gives me some error and wont let me in. I've also tried installing Windows to the spare hard drive, though I believe something is wrong with the Disc, as it will give me an error when I reboot.

Any suggestions? Will acutally installing Ubuntu help get to the data I need?

Thanks in advance.

[EXreaction]

I have an idea on how to get it...but it could take a lot of work...

You could resize the windows partion with something like Ultimate Boot Disk(make the windows partion 4-5GB smaller)

Then install windows on the extra space you made, install Nero or whatever you use to burn dvds/cds and then burn everything you need backed up from the old windows partion onto a disk...

Then you could wipe everything, and install a clean OS...and just get everything you need from the dvds/cds you made.

[elroy]

If you have corrupted files on the drive you should be able to access the remaining files. However, if the corruption affects the partition table, boot record, file tables etc you have a much bigger problem. This may require file recovery software.

The suggestion made by EXreaction may work but you may lose all of your data if it doesn't. The 1st rule of data recovery is never write anything to the disk.

Can you slave the drive into another pc and copy your files off from there?

[haxxorpoop]

elory: The corruption may have affected the partiton table, however, spending some money on file recovery software is not that big of a problem for me atm, as I really would like some of this data.

I've tried accessing the Drive through my Ubuntu bootdisk (even just mounting the drive), however, when the LiveCD is loading, it will stall at the "Enterprise Volume Management System", and I wont be able to get into any OS.

Any other suggestions?