Is ntfsfix safe to use for recovery of USB drive proper mounting?

Support & Help Requests Hardware
#1

An USB drive began to fail mounting, more details here [1].
The main error message is:
"$MFTMirr does not match $MFT (record 0).
Failed to mount '/dev/sdb2': 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."

Is it safe to use ntfsfix for this USB drive, even if NTFS is not explicitly stated
by fdisk as its filesystem (but some idiotic "Microsoft basic data")?

If it is not 100% safe, are there ways to copy data from the failing to mount USB drive
into another USB drive directly?

[1] USB drive stopped mounting and can't be opened

#2

Best Thing is to Open the Drive on a Microsoft Windows install and then in Linux.
Trying to fix nts on linux is doable for a disk image you can play with but wont do well on a real harddrive. Use testdisk.

#3

Absolutely not. It might work, if you're very lucky. But it might also - as in, "is very likely to" - instead cause further damage that would turn your possibly-recoverable (via other means) data into no-longer-recoverable data.

are there ways to copy data from the failing to mount USB drive into another USB drive directly?

Your best options are probably either dd or gparted. Note that both can and will cause further damage if you "do something stupid" with them, but otherwise will not. gl.