Recovering NTFS Partitions Corrupted due to Missing $UsnJrnl or $LogFile file

You must have noticed many times that your Windows system becomes too slow and takes too much time to start. This happens because the NTFS file system of Windows system has become corrupted due to various reasons such as virus infection, human errors, power surges, abrupt system shutdown, etc. Actually, due to these reasons, sometimes the boot files or system files can get corrupt or removed. Because of this, the Windows system is not able to boot properly and, thus, the NTFS partitions become inaccessible. In such cases, you should take appropriate corrective measures to recover your NTFS partition. However, if you are unable to do so then you should use a third-party NTFS partition recovery software to efficiently and safely perform NTFS data recovery.

Consider a scenario wherein you are unable to boot your NTFS-partitioned Windows system. An error message is displayed, that is:

"stop 0x0000007B (0x00000000, 0xC0000032, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)

Inaccessible_boot_device"

In addition to this, when you try to install Windows 2000 on the NTFS partition, the following error message is displayed:

"Windows 2000 recognizes the partition you selected, but the partition is unformatted or damaged. To install Windows 2000 on this partition, setup must reformat it."

And finally, when you open the Recovery Console and use the dir command to see the contents of the hard drive volume, the following error message is displayed:

"Directory of F:An error occurred during directory enumeration."

When you execute ChkDsk command on the NTFS partition, the process completes successfully without detecting any error or making any corrections. If you run the chkdskvolume_drive_letter:/p Recovery Console command, then also no error is detected. Having said that you still are not able to boot or mount the volume.

Cause

The root cause of this problem is that the NTFS partition has an invalid or corrupt record in either the $UsnJrnl file or the $LogFile file. These files are internal files that are used only by NTFS, and Chkdsk does not check the integrity of these files.

Resolution

To address this situation and to access the system again, you can perform either of the following methods:

Use the Microsoft Windows XP or the Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Recovery Console to repair the $UsnJrnl file.

Use the Fsutil.exe tool from a Windows XP CD-ROM to delete the Change/USN journal. Move that drive to another computer that is running Windows 2000 to make repairs.

By performing either of the aforementioned methods, you can resolve the issue. However, if you are still not able to boot the system then you should use a third-party NTFS file recovery tool to perform NTFS file recovery. Such read-only tools recover lost data by employing fast yet sophisticated scanning algorithms.

NTFS data recovery software is a reliable NTFS partition recovery software that recovers data from NTFS file systems. It is able to recover lost NTFS partitions, lost data from formatted NTFS volumes, and data that is no longer present on the hard drive. This NTFS data recovery tool supports NTFS and NTFS5 file systems, and is compatible with Windows 7, Vista, Server 2003, XP, and 2000.