Hello, sorry if this has been covered but I couldn't find anything. I have an external hard drive that is having issues, so I want to try and get all my pictures off of that drive before I try and reformat it. I am using FC3, and was wondering how I can get at the files in the windows partition on that external drive, if possible.

Thanks~

Please post more details if you need helps.
What kind of filesystem does the windows partition use

If it is ntfs you will have to recompile the linux kernel
to activate the ntfs read only support options.
If it is vfat, please make sure you have mounted it.

It is NTFS. I don't even know enough to know what details you would need

I can tell you what I think happened. Last night before bed I began to defragment that hard drive. My Windows partition is only 10 GB on my internal hard drive, so I used the external for all my iTunes songs and family pictures, as well as games that I can't play on Linux.

Today when I woke up, the computer was frozen and the screen black. For some reason my keyboard (USB, same as the external hard drive) didn't work. I manually restarted and used an old ps2 keyboard and got it restarted, but now when I try and access anything on that drive, the error says there is a problem with the I/O device. Then the USB mouse freezes and I have to restart using the keyboard.

I was able to launch iTunes (the iTunes program files are on the C: drive, but the songs were on the external drive) and burn all the songe which I had bought to a CD at least, but the most important thing is getting the hundreds of pictures off of the drive, mostly of my 20 month old. My wife will have a fit if they are lost.

I hope that's all you needed- I am a true linux neophye, but hopefully I can do whatever is needed to get into that drive. If I need to install a different distro ( as in if that wouold be easier for a newbie like me) that had that functionality built in ( I remember Mandrake 9 did it pretty easily), then so be it.

Thanks for any help you can offer!
Chris

may you get help from this link .

Thanks, I'll give it a shot! I appreciate your help!

ok, I am a bit confused about the comman you listed, so I wanted to check before I tried it. Your link said:

4.How to mount new partitions in fedora core?
you can mount new partitions in fedora core temporary or permanently, as root make a new
directory with any name for the new partition for example:
mkdir /windows
then run the command:
mount -t vfat /dev/hdax /windows
x is your new partitons number, hda is the primary ide master, change it to proper for
your hard drive, vfat is for fat32, write the proper file system for your new partition like
nfts, ext2 or ext3, this will mount the new partition under /windows directory.
if you want to permanently add the partition to fedora core open the /etc/fstab
in any editore you like for example:
gedit /etc/fstab
add this line just after the other partitions to fstab:
/dev/hdax /windows vfat defaults 1 2
change the x and vfat as mentioned above to proper for your new partitions.


This is what I have, partitions wise. I don't know what the master is.
/dev/hda
hda1 1001MB ntfs (My internal Windows partition)
hda2 102 MB ext3
hda3 66213 LVM Physical Volume

/hda/sda
sda1 78160 ntfs (the naughty drive)

I logged in as root and made the windows directory (mkdir/windows)
then I started the other command. Should it be
mount -t ntfs /dev/hdasda1/windows ? It's the x part I'm not sure about.

Thanks again and sorry if the question seems dumb- I am trying to learn!

shameless bump!