Need to rescue files from Windows

[wingman358]

Hello all. About a month ago I booted up my computer but encountered an error: "A Disk Read Error Occured. Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart." I restarted, but the same error popped up. I gave up all hope and abandoned the computer. I came back to it a week or two later and booted it up again. This time, I was able to get to reach the GRUB booter (I was dual booting Windows XP Pro and Ubuntu 5.10). I selected Windows XP Pro but encountered the following error:

"Booting 'Microsoft Windows XP Professional'
root(hd0,0)
filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x7
savedefault
make active
chainloader +1

A Disk Read Error Occured. Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart."

I booted into the Windows Recovery Console using the Windows XP install disk and ran chkdisk /r to try repairing any erros. Chkdsk started out fine and got to 29% where it encountered an error. It attempted to fix the error, but was unable to. It displayed the error: "The volume appears to contain one or more unrecoverable problems." I gave up on the Windows Recovery Console.

I am able to boot into Ubuntu Linux just fine. A friend of mine suggested that I attempt to rescue the files off my Windows partition from my Ubuntu install. I'm not sure how to do that from Ubuntu, but while searching for answers I found a simple looking solution: use the Knoppix Live CD. I booted into Knoppix 5.01 (the live cd) and attempted to mount "hda1" which was on the desktop. The progress bar came up and didn't appear to do anything for a couple seconds. I then recieved the following error:

"Could not mount device.
The reported error was:
Error reading $MFT : Input/output error
Failed to load $MFT : Input/output error
Failed to startup volume : Input/output error
Couldn't mount device '/dev/hda1' : Input/output error
Mount failed. "

It would be great if someone could help me figure out how to retrieve my files. I think my next step would be to just format the entire disk and just do a fresh install.

Thanks in advance.

[Harry Kuhman]

Understand that in many cases Knoppix can read the files on a disk that Windows refuses to read, but in other cases that Windows may have damaged the file structure so bad that Knoppix can't read the data any longer either. That said, see answer #5. Also, if Knoppix fails you might want to look in the other Live CD forum for some other Linux CDs that have some more agressive tools for data recovery, such as Helix.

[wingman358]

Thanks for your response, Harry.