I am getting Input/output error while opening a folder in 12.04

Question

I am getting Input/output error while opening a folder in 12.04. Also, I am not able to see file in another folder.

I am getting below error. Please help me recovering the folder.

Error: Error when getting information for file '/media/Data/softwares/windows': Input/output error
Please select another viewer and try again.

Solution

It is likely that your Data disk may be dying or at least have it's filesystem corrupted (which, again, is often a symptom of the disk dying).

Firstly make sure you have backups of all important data on that disk.

Then you can check S.M.A.R.T. status of the drive and run self-checks. If the checks say the drive is OK then run a filesystem check utility, depending on the type of filesystem you have on that drive.

1. Read the wikipedia article

2. Install smartmontools package

3. Read Ubuntu wiki

4. Run "long" or "extended" test on the drive with sudo smartctl -t long /dev/sdX, wait for it to finish, see if the test completes successfully, possibly paste the output of sudo smartctl -a /dev/sdX here

Comments

[Untitled]

What filesystem is it on?

[Dinesh]

@mateo_salta: I am using my hard drive, yes, inside my computer

[Dinesh]

@SahandMozaffari: it is on NTFS

[Mateo]

is it a second partition on the drive for windows? do you use hibernate on windows?

[Dinesh]

actually i have three partitions, one for Ubuntu, one for Windows and another for data. I am facing problems in data partition for a folder. Also, i am not able to open this folder even from Windows. I dont use hibernate.

[Mateo]

that is good, it rules out this problem askubuntu.com/q/105958/47291 , so are you trying to recover those files specifically, or trying to stop the errors from happening, askubuntu.com/questions/59968/…

[Untitled]

I'm sure buying a new platform would also fix the problem , but does that count as a solution?

[Dinesh]

I had run self chek, and it says drive is ok. But, can you please explain what S.M.A.R.T is, and how to check it?

[Sergey]

@Dinesh: I've added instructions and links

[Dinesh]

I have installed and run teh smartmontools.. please check the result of sudo smartctl -a here

[Sergey]

Have you ran sudo smartctl -t long /dev/sdX? This should schedule a "long" self-test, which should take about an hour to finish. At the moment there are some errors logged, but they all seem to have happened a few hundred hours ago. To be honest, I'm always having trouble interpreting the output from smartctl :)

[Dinesh]

yes, I ran sudo smartctl -t long /dev/sdX, and it took almost an hour.. yeah I tried to analyze the output, but its hard for me. can you please tell me what should i look for, and how to recover lost data, if i am able to using this tool.

[Dinesh]

just want to update you that, i got the data back :) Initially i was not able to open folder, but later the folders got disappeared. yesterday i found that all my data is in a folder named something like 'lost & found'... copied back to my desired location. Any ways, thanks for your answers. do you know why this happened...

[Sergey]

"...your system might crash... at the next boot, a lengthy filesystem check... using fsck will be done. Fsck will go through the system and try to recover any corrupt files that it finds. The result of this recovery operation will be placed in (/lost+found). The files recovered are not likely to be complete or make much sense but there always is a chance that something worthwhile is recovered. Each partition has its own lost+found directory. tldp.org/LDP/Linux-Filesystem-Hierarchy/html/lostfound.html - the filesystem got corrupted (either because of the drive error or system crash.

[Anwar]

I think it's got virus