Data Recovery from NTFS Partition after MFT Corruption

Updated on March 19, 2022

I installed Windows 7 recently and since then NTFS partitions on my hard disk drive have gone "crazy". They tend to "freeze" and don’t open in explorer for some time and in few occasions all partitions of the drive won’t show up until reboot. Yesterday one of NTFS partition started showing a warning message like “disk structure is corrupted and unreadable”. Disk Management tool displayed the NTFS partition as RAW and CHKDSK showed me that the MFT is corrupt; I just want my important files from that NTFS partition back.

A corrupt Master File Table is an error message that occurs when a CHKDSK scan is run on inaccessible NTFS drives including hard drives and SSDs, to fix file system errors. During the scan, if the command-line based disk error checking utility – CHKDSK – detects severe file system errors and corruption beyond repair, the utility displays the error

Have you encountered a Corrupt Master File Table error while running a CHKDSK scan on the corrupt or inaccessible NTFS drive? Well, you need not worry. It is just a simple issue that can be resolved easily. All you need to do is to follow this article.

What Are The Reasons behind the “Corrupt master file table” error?

Well, there are many reasons behind the “Corrupt master file table” error. Some of the commons among them are:

• Windows operating system crash
• NTFS file system corruption
• Application malfunction
• Severe virus / malware infection
• Sudden power failure
• MBR (Master Boot Record) corruption
• Bad sectors on hard disk

Note: One thing you need to do after coming across MFT corruption and data loss problem is to immediately stop using your computer hard drive, as it avoids overwriting of lost data from NTFS partition.

How to Fix Corrupt Master File Table Error?

Method 1: Repair Corrupt Master File Table with CHKDSK Utility

1. Right-click the hard drive with a corrupt master file table and choose "Properties".
2. Click "Tools" > "Check". And choose "Scan drive".

If CHKDSK is aborted, move to Solution 2.

Method 2: Use FixMbr Command to Repair MFT

1. Enter System Recovery Options screen. Connect a bootable USB drive to your computer, restart the PC and continuously press F2 or F8 to enter the BIOS setup. Go to the Startup or Boot column and set the computer to boot from your new drive. Save the changes and restart your PC.
2. Follow the on-screen message, and select "Repair your Computer" when you get to the System Recovery Options window.
3. Select "Command Prompt" to open a command prompt window. Type bootrec.exe and press Enter.

The parameter /FixMbr allows the repair of a corrupted Master Boot Record.

Method 3: Perform Startup Repair

Windows Startup repair is another option to fix the Corrupt Master File Table error. For this, you are required to boot in a recovery environment which you can do by turning your computer ON and OFF three times. Also, make sure to turn off your computer on seeing the windows logo. After the third attempt, Windows will boot into the diagnostics mode. Once done, follow some steps:

• Step 1: Select the “Advanced options” when you see the recovery screen. Now you have to select the “Troubleshoot” from the given options.
• Step 2: Now you have to tap on the “Advanced options” button.
• Step 3: Now tap on the “Startup Repair” from the given options.

Method 4: Recover Data and Format the Drive

If the above fixes can't address the "Corrupt master file table. Windows cannot recover master file table. CHKDSK aborted" issue; the final try is formatting the hard drive to make it accessible and usable. But to avoid data loss, you need to recover data from the corrupted partition with a professional hard drive recovery software in advance.

Method 5: Recover Data from Corrupted Hard Drive using Yodot

Whatever may be the reason behind your MFT table corruption and data loss from the NTFS partition, you can still get back data using an efficient data recovery tool such as Yodot Hard Drive Recovery. Other than MFT corruption, this utility can be used to rescue and recover data from deleted, lost, formatted, reformatted, and corrupted NTFS partitions. It has got the ability to retrieve data from partitions/drives formatted with file systems such as FAT16, FAT32, NTFS5, and exFAT.

Steps to use the software:

• Download and install Yodot Hard Drive Recovery software.
• Select your hard drive from where you want to recover data and press “Next”.
• The software scans again and displays all the logical partitions present from the selected hard drive, choose the NTFS drive from where data is to be recovered and click on “Next”.
• Allow the software to complete the scan. The application displays all the recovered files in two distinct view types; “Data Type” and “File Type” after scanning the selected drive.
• Preview the files and save the recovered files to your desired location (Not to the same hard drive)

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