I'm brand new to this forum and really new to LINUX. A friend introduced me to it and helped me with a similar problem on another computer several months ago but I'll be darned if I can remember how he did it.

I have a Dell Latitude D800 running Win XP Pro. Last week I vowed to backup the hard drive as I have vital stuff there so, guess what. Yesterday I got the blue screen of death saying that I had an "unmountable_boot_volume". I have tried everything I can think of, which ain't that much, but at this point, I just need to get the files from the Dell off that hard drive and onto an external hard drive or onto another computer. I have the UBUNTU disks and can get to the system terminal but I just can't remember all the commands to mount the 'bad' hard drive in order to move the files to a 'good' hard drive. Remembering that I am a total novice, can someone help me before I end up blowing a circuit (in my brain) for trying to figure this out.

A friend looked at it yesterday and used some utility to check it out briefly. He said his utility wasn't even finding an OS but he said the files are still there. He just didn't have time to move them. Said it would be simple for me to do it. Riiight.

Much thanks for any assistance! Happy Fourth of July!

Welcome to the world of Linux =)
The first step is to boot up the Ubuntu LiveCD. If I'm not mistaken, you should have the one that boots up a fully functional desktop. In that case it would be simple. The partitions should be automatically detected, so you just plug in the external drive (which should also get detected), and move everything over via cut/copy and paste in a file browser. Once you're done, you right click on the icon of the removable drive, and click on "Unmount Volume" to remove it safely. Your files are rescued

If you don't have that desktop CD, but rather the one that chucks you onto a command line, it's also no problem, just involves more typing.

Now you should know what your bust device is called under linux. I'll assume it's called /dev/sda1. First BEFORE plugging in the external drive, type:
and hit enter. It should give you a list of devices. For example: "/dev/sda1 on /mnt/sda1".
This basically means: There's a partition called /dev/sda1 (I'll call it that for the sake of the example), and it's mounted onto a directory called /mnt/sda1 (The so-called mount point. The directory, via which you access the contents of the partition). Note down the list of devices, then insert the external drive, wait for a few seconds, then execute the same command again. You should see the same list, plus one extra device. Write down its name and its mount point. That's your external drive.

Now to sum it up: Say your broken partition is called /dev/sda1 and is mounted on /mnt/sda1, and you want to move all your files from there to an external partition, which linux recognizes as /dev/sdb1 and mounted to /mnt/sdb1 (Just substitute these names with the real ones)..

Execute these commands:

That's it! You've copied everything to the other drive and safely removed it. Now you can format or repair the other one, then copy the stuff back afterwards. Hope this wasn't too confusing. Good luck!

-A

Ok, so I'm gonna sound dumber than a box of hammers here. I am working with 2 laptop computers. The "bad" one is the Dell Latitude D800. I have a fully functional IBM Thinkpad. I also have a LaCie 250 gig external hard drive. My thought was to try to access the hard drive on the Dell (bad) to move the files to the LaCie external drive. The UBUNTU CD I have is a blue one, actually it says KUBUNTU 6.10 on the sleeve. Do I need to install the KUBUNTU 6.10 on the IBM and, if so, don't I have to have some link between the Dell and the IBM? I'm not really particular where I move the files to, whether it's the IBM or the LaCie so long as I get them from the Dell. Sorry to be dense but I think I'm in the "B" learning group here.

The key to your solution is boot cd(s).

You could try and use UltimateBootCD4Windows since it has alot of utilities for people more used to the windows UI.

However, usually your just better off scubbing windows for a reinstall after you back up your data rather than try and repair it.

Tools:

INSERT
Blank CD
USB External Harddrive
Broken windows install


INSERT - My personal favorite live cd for back ups since its small, has support for NTFS and has a simple GUI. There are several other options here though since there are many boot cds that can read ntfs and back up your data.

After downloading the from here, you have to burn it to a cd. it comes in .iso format which is a standard cd image if you have not used iso before. If you dont have anything to burn the iso (something like nero) i recommend imgburn for windows. its a no mess iso burner/creator free of charge.

After you burn the cd put it in your cd/dvd drive of the broken computer. boot the computer and make sure it boots from a cd. This can be done in the bios or hitting something like F12 at post. Make sure your usb drive is plugged in and turned on before you boot.

the cd will continue to boot and as long as there are no serious hardware problems with either cpu, ram, mobo, cdrom, psu, or gpu, you will be looking at the desktop of the livecd

after closing the initial browser window, right click the desktop and navigate to emelfm(superuser mode) Its somewhere under the apps menu.

emelfm will be a 2 pane file browser meaning it shows one folder on the left and one folder on the right.

dourblle click the .. a few times till it stops changing. this is essentially clicking the up-directory arrow in windows. after you get to the top directory, you should see a folder that says /mnt.

double click this folder and you should see a few folders things like /sda1 (internal SATA - first partition) /hda1 (internal ATA/PATA - first partition) /sdb1 (external usb - partition 1)

right click each of these folders and select mount. This will mount the drive(so you can browse) as long as there are no errors you should be able to find your data on the drives.

in the right pane browse to that /mnt folder and then to your external usb drive.

now that you have your data in the left pane for recovery and the drive to back it up to in the right, all you have to do is sleced the folders for copying and hit the copy button and it should just copy it off.

once your done copping all the data, right click the desktop, and select halt/exit and reboot the computer. it should eject the cd and ask you to hit enter to continue.

Im sure ill end up making a full howto in the next few hours with photos on my site

www.s3raph1rn.com

for more info check out inserts page

try my mini howto lol you dont need a full desktop cd like ubuntu/kubuntu. not to mention the version you have lacks NTFS support

Ok, got as far as trying to mnt/ the hda2 and it says it can't mount it. Said the NTFS is inconsistent and to run chkdsk /f on Windows then reboot twice. Now here's the problem. I can boot to the Windows repair mode from CD, however when I try to run the chkdsk /f it says it's not a valid command. Sooo, no can do the chkdsk thing.

I've also tried running the chkdsk /r and it gets to 25% and stops. I'm about ready to throw this thing thru the window...no pun intended. If I didn't absolutely need the info from the C: drive, I just reformat the whole shootin match and be done with it. And when I plug in the external hard drive, it recognizes IT at the C: drive. This is total frustration.

Well first let me say congrats! At least you got that far. How ever if you successfully mounted hda1, was it just the restore partition?

Another thing that might be possible (that i don't know why i didn't think of it before) is a repair reinstall. it only writes over the windows files but not the user data. you would still be able to recover the data after it finished. however the corruption on the drive might prevent that.

Unfortunately it seems we have to get "down and dirty" with the command line.

While in INSERT, double click the box on the right that looks like "the matrix" (green funky text scrolling down on it) and a terminal window should pop up.

while there type and hit the <tab> key on your keyboard twice and it should give you a list of possible programs all starting with "ntfs." these tools are your friends and if you don't know how to use them you have 2 options. First are the man pages. simply type and hit enter and it should bring up a mini manual on how to use the program. hit q to exit. The second source of info on the programs is google. google is your friend

Next thing to do is to make sure you looking at the right stuff. with the terminal window open type and hit enter this will print a list of connected drives along with other useful information about partition and file system types. just verify that the partitions your looking at are the ones your trying to work with.

After that, your probably going to want to use the ntfsfix program its not a full chkdsk program (according to its man page) but it might get the job done here. any way type man ntfsfix in the terminal you have open and read though how to use it. once you have run it on your drive.
it the device as it is called in the man pages is your hard drive witch will be /dev/hda2. the command you enter should look similar (if not identical to after that you can still mount the drive manually since emelfm won't let you do it because the drive is scheduled for checking.

for this we will need to use ntfs-3g. once again the man pages and or google will be your best resource if you get stuck.

i would recommend using the mount -t ntfs-3g device mount point method. it is more consistent with the mounting of other types of file systems like fat32

your device once again is going to be /dev/hda2 and your mount point is going to be /mnt/hda2 the mount point is just the folder that gives you access to the drive.

the command should look something like you should now be able to browse back to that folder in emelfm to access your data. Good luck!

New morning. Thought I'd start on the headache once again. I brought up the terminal window and am looking at the fdisk -l list. The Dell hard drive is partitioned, the Dell utilities are on /dev/hda1. The ntfs partition is the /dev/hda2. Under system it says HPFS/NTFS, if that makes any difference.

I've tried to mount the hda2 every way I can. Even tried the ntfsfix to no avail. I've also tried the repair reinstall with Windows. Unfortunately once I get to where I choose "R", it goes to a "C" prompt and sits there. I've never done a repair install so I don't know where to go from there. I thought the repair mode would just take me thru a bunch of steps but I was wrong.

to do a repair install, you have to go through the set up like it is a normal install. Then it will scan your hard drive looking for other installations of windows. here it will ask you if you want to repair or do over. i don't know if this is where you got to or if you kept going into the repair console.

you can try and use testdisk to rpair the mbr but i don't think thats it. what are the outputs of ntfsfix and mount -t ntfs-3g?