Using Knoppix to recover files
 

Hi all,
Hope someone here can help can help a newbie out.

I am trying to recover some files from an unbootable computer. I created a Knoppix CD and booted from there. At first, everything worked great, I was able to copy my files onto a USB key.

While copying an entire folder, it began to give error messages and said that some of the files did not exist. I skipped through these messages and completed the copy. Then I tried to copy more files but I could not access the partition anymore. Now when I boot the system, it will not detect the partitions, only the USB drive.

Any idea what happened and how I can fix this?

Thanks in advance.

You didn't specify why the computer was unbootable, but it sure sounds like a hard drive failure progressing.

When you say it doesn't detect the partitions, do you mean that they are not mounted? Or that there is no entry for them in /dev?

If the latter, then there must be error messages in /var/log/messages. Boot knoppix then look in that log and post any messages pertaining to the hard drive here.

If the former, try running badblocks (in read only mode) on one of the partitions, and see what is happening.

I would be hesitant about using something like fsck or any other filesystem-level utility that makes changes on a drive that was behaving this way until I understood what I was facing.

If you have, or are able to obtain a copy of, or are willing to purchase, Spinrite, then this is the tool that I recommend in order to proceed. In fact, from your description of the symptoms, it could turn out that this is the ONLY tool that you will be able to proceed with.

I second the recommendation for SpinRite. It's saved data for me on a dying disk before. It's not free, in either sense, but it's one program that's worth the cost.

But you may have other options too. If you have a larger second hard disk with the room to spare, you might try to making a full disk or partition image backup with ddrescue. Then you can mount the image and recover your files from there.

Thanks for your input.

I'm not sure why the computer was unbootable. It was giving me an error message about a corrupt or missing file (Windows). It's an old computer so I don't really care about fixing it, I just wanted to save some files.

I'm still learning about all this so please excuse my ignorance. Initially, when I booted Knoppix, there were icons on the desktop for my hard drives and the USB drive. Now when I boot, it only shows the USB drive on the desktop.

After doing a search, I've tried mounting it with...
mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/hda1
...but still does not work.

If you really need what is on the disk, you could clone the disk onto a new hdd
I successfully cloned my parent's windows me 20gb disk onto a new 500 gb disk.
I followed the instructions on this link.
http://www.nilbus.com/linux/disk-copy.php

I have also had successfully recovered all of my files and programs from a corrupted disk using testdisk.
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk