I'm trying to recover some priceless data for a friend who's powerbook g4 maliciously crashed. I'm trying to use a ubuntu ppc live cd to go in there mount the partition, and transfer the files via ftp over the network. The live cd boots without any problems, but I get the error that /dev/hda is in use, or already mounted when I try to mount it (which neither are true). Note that the reason for the crash could have been a dying hard drive, but I'll try anything to recover the data. I used several varients of: mount -t hfsplus /dev/hda /mnt/macosx to try to mount the drive. Also note that /dev/hda is the only hard disk device in /dev. Thanks for any help you can provide.

try mount /dev/hda1 if it's the first partition...

There is no /dev/hda1 in /dev, so it says there is no such partition. Is there an easier way of retrieving this data? All help is appreciated.

Any other ideas, or alternative methods of retrieving this data? It would be nice if he doesn't have to send it to those recovery people for a grand.

I'm sorry to bring up this old thread, but I never found out how to mount it... (read original post)

Try fdisk -l "small L" /dev/hda to list the partitions on hda and see what it shows. hda1 may not be the main partition.