Help mounting hard drive in knoppix
 

Hello, I have been running a computer under Windows XP for years, and recently it stopped booting unexpectedly. It tries to load windows, but partway though loading a BSOD flashes and it shuts down. To remedy this and hopefully fix this, my frined lent me some Knoppix CDs that I could boot from. He also lent me some external hard drives. I want to be able to access my files on my old hard drive.
Here's the problem: (in Knoppix 6) When I try to mount my main partition of my hard drive, which shows as sda2 (sda1 is an old recovery partition left over from when I ran vista), the following message pops up: "A job is pending on dev/sda2" A little later another error window pops up: Did not receive a reply. Possible causes include: the remote application did not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the network connection was broken." I want to be able to mount my hard drive in Knoppix 6. Can anyone help?

#su
<enter for passwd>
#mkdir /bli
#mount -t ntfs /dev/sda2 /bli

/bli has your files
vfat is fat32

#mount

lists mounted devices

#umount /abc

unmounts /abc

---------- Post added May 29th, 2011 at 22:48 ----------

parted magic cd will be better suited for your purpose

I tried the commands you suggested,and I went to the /bli folder. It was empty. What should I try next?

I also got an error report:

ntfs_attr_pread_i: ntfs_pread failed: Input/output error
Failed to read NTFS $Bitmap: 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.

From a little Googling, I suspect that your error message may be "A job is pending on dev/sda2". The cause of this may be that Knoppix has already found the partition and tried to mount it. Before you try to mount the partition, run mount to see what partitions are already mounted. If you see your Windows partition in the list, simply use the existing mountpoint to access your files.

--- rod.

Thank you, I didn't catch that typo. Unfortunately, i put in "mount" and /dev/sda2 was not listed. I ahev one more thing that may be useful. When I mount it in Knoppix 5, It says it needed to "force" mount because the "volume was dirty" Regardless, what is my next course of action?

A little more Googling, and I find that it appears that there is no Linux remedy for clearing the dirty volume status. The NTFS driver relies on running Windows' chkdsk to fix the corrupted disk. Are you able to mount the disk? Read files? If so, I would try to mount it read-only, and copy as much as possible from it.
If you have access to a bootable Windows system, you might be able to put the drive in it, and use Windows to fix it, if it is fixable. Does Windows still use recue floppies? If so, maybe that is an option for repair.
--- rod.

ntfsfix does that