can i retrieve my files from my hdd after windows crash by booting from usb?

Question

yesterday i tried turning on my toshiba satellite laptop but it started booting and crashed after showing a blue screen for half a second. and before i reinstall windows ,i want to backup my files, so i created a bootable ubuntu usb drive, I booted from usb and i clicked try ubuntu, and then when i tried accessing my hdd's it says unable to mount XXXXXXXXXX Adding read ACL for uid 999 to `/media/ubuntu' failed: Operation not supported so is that because i clicked try ubuntu? or my hdd is dead?

Answer 1

Your hard drive is not dead, but you won't be able to access it because Windows has marked the drive as in use.

Open a termainal, and type sudo fdisk -l. Find the name of your windows drive (example: /dev/sda5)

Now, using this, run sudo ntfsfix /dev/path/to/your/drive and it will fix the issue (or at least it should).