my laptop running ubuntu 11.10 was updated to 12.04 but failed halfway through update. i had no option but to turn the laptop off as it had frozen and back on again to find the laptop non functioning. i then made a ubuntu 12.04 boot cd to boot the laptop to save my files from the internal laptop hard drive to the external hard drive off my pc running windows xp via usb no problems there but then i proceeded in a very tired state to install ubuntu 12.04 from the cd i choose the partition method the first option of 3 to keep files and folders i started the install and a few seconds in noticed it was writing to my external usb drive got scared and pulled the usb lead then proceeded to do a normal install of ubuntu 12.04 on my laptop but now ubuntu will not open my external 250 gb hdd but does recognise it as such in disk utility. instead of mounting it gives this message.
Error mounting: mount exited with exit code 13: $MFTMirr does not match $MFT (record 0).
Failed to mount '/dev/sdb1': Input/output error
NTFS is either inconsistent, or there is a hardware fault, or it's a
SoftRAID/FakeRAID hardware. In the first case run chkdsk /f on Windows
then reboot into Windows twice. The usage of the /f parameter is very
important! If the device is a SoftRAID/FakeRAID then first activate
it and mount a different device under the /dev/mapper/ directory, (e.g.
/dev/mapper/nvidia_eahaabcc1). Please see the 'dmraid' documentation
for more details.
windows does not recognise it as anything neither does easus. please help i desperatly need all my files back i feel such an idiot.
Ok getting there I just managed to copy all my files from the external to the laptop using test disk and then suddenly the laptop cut out and rebooted itself into low graphics mode I get 4 options nothing works it keeps looping betwean this and a grub mode and will no longer accept my password in the black screen mode man this is cruel please can anyone help
sudo apt-get install testdisk
from command line in 12.04. It is also available for Windows cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec . I have no experience using it, so I didn't put this as an answer, but some people swear by it, apparently having experienced something similar to your situation. (Despite the name, it can recover more than photos.)