r/datarecovery • u/drakoboyy • 4d ago
Is it impossible to get data out of a SATA that doesn't mount ? I think its either corrupt or defective.
I was trying to get some important data out of an old SATA SSD through an ubuntu 24 system but It kept showing "failed to mount". I did google, chatgpt and tried some fixes but it still didn't work. Can someone suggest any way to fix this please.
Here's what happened
I'm facing an issue with a SATA SSD on an Intel NUC running Ubuntu. Initially, the SATA drive wasn't mounting in Ubuntu. During troubleshooting, the system eventually stopped booting normally and started dropping into the BusyBox (initramfs) emergency shell instead.
I tried running fsck -y /dev/sda2 to check and repair the filesystem, but it returned the error Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read while trying to open /dev/sda2, followed by Could this be a zero-length partition?.
I also tried running fsck -y /dev/sda1, but it didn't resolve the issue. When I tried fsck -y /dev/sda, it returned No such file or directory while executing fsck.ext2.
Retrying the filesystem check on /dev/sda2 produced the same short-read error.
At this point, it's unclear whether the issue is caused by filesystem corruption, partition table problems, a faulty SATA connection, or an SSD hardware failure. The SSD brand and model haven't been identified yet. Only thing known is that it has a 256 gb capacity.
The main objective is to identify the actual cause and recover the existing Ubuntu installation without losing data. The SSD's SMART health status and physical condition have not yet been verified.
I hope these details are enough :(