How can I use Ubuntu live disk to get my data from a dead laptop hard drive?

My hard drive crashed, so I'm trying to retrieve the data on it using a Ubuntu live disk. I can access the desktop, and from there I open "files" and try to open "1.0 TB Volume," which (I think) is my hard drive. After a good bit of waiting, I receive the message:

Error mounting /dev/sda1 at /media/ubuntu/282E16D52E169BBE: Command-line `mount -t "ntfs" -o "uhelper=udisks2,nodev,nosuid,uid=999,gid=999,dmask=0077,fmask=0177" "/dev/sda1" "/media/ubuntu/282E16D52E169BBE"' exited with non-zero exit status 13: ntfs_attr_pread_i: ntfs_pread failed: Input/output error
Failed to read hiberfil.sys: Input/output error
Failed to mount '/dev/sda1': Input/output error
NTFS is either inconsistent, or there is a hardware fault, or it's a
SoftRAID/FakeRAID hardware. In the first case run chkdsk /f on Windows
then reboot into Windows twice. The usage of the /f parameter is very
important! If the device is a SoftRAID/FakeRAID then first activate
it and mount a different device under the /dev/mapper/ directory, (e.g.
/dev/mapper/nvidia_eahaabcc1). Please see the 'dmraid' documentation
for more details.

I tried a system repair disk, but it spent about 8 hours "fixing" the problem and would have continued had I not shut it off. I don't really mind waiting, but after 8 hours I doubt it would have done anything.

What can I do about this? Please avoid using any words, phrases, or abbreviations that are too technical, as I am not very skilled with computers.

1 Answer

From the live media, first try mount the drive in read-only mode.

sudo mkdir /mnt/tmp
sudo mount -tntfs-3g -oro /dev/sda1 /mnt/tmp

Then try to read anything you want from /mnt/tmp The other, more dangerous approach is to try the mount with the (poorly documented) option remove_hiberfile, which will delete the entire last session.