Input output error on NTFS folders with colons and pipe characters.

[HyperBear]

I am unable to access directories with colons and pipe characters in the name on an NTFS file system. Input/output error.

I have an NTFS hard drive from prior times which contains files and folders that contain POSIX-only characters such as : and |. These were created in older versions of Linux Mint and/or Ubuntu which allowed the creation of such file names under NTFS. While Windows doesn't support POSIX-only characters like :|" in file names, NTFS does, so those file names are still valid in NTFS.

However, on said hard drive, now I am only able to access files with such characters, not folders. Their content is completely inaccessible, both through the terminal and through the graphical file manager Nemo. I am getting Input/output errors like:

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find: ‘example | folder | name’: Input/output error

The actual names were different, but all contained the aforementioned characters.

Is there any way to access the data besides having to boot up an old Linux distribution?

I haven't tried that yet, but if even that doesn't work, it is possible Windows has somehow corrupted those folders, because I have accessed that hard drive from Windows too, but I didn't interact with those folders that contain the POSIX-only characters.

[mikeflan]

I am unable to access directories with colons and pipe characters in the name on an NTFS file system. Input/output error.

I believe that. NTFS cannot handle pipes in the directory name"

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$ mkdir pipe\|name
mkdir: cannot create directory ‘pipe|name’: Invalid argument
$

And when I create a directory pipe|name in Linux and try to copy it to NTFS it gets changed to pipe_name.

So I am wondering how you got that directory there in the first place.

Is there any way to access the data besides having to boot up an old Linux distribution?

I don't know, but I'm not sure Linux will be able to open it either.