recently my windows PCs partition became corrupt due to fixboot(thank you Microsoft ), I'd tell you the details but it's not the point of my post. Anyway, I tried to use testdisk which is on knoppix roughly following THIS guide, but was unsuccessful, and wound up using GetDataBack a proprietary(I know that's another bad word around here) software.

One thing I noticed is that getdataback searches the sectors while testdisk searches cylinders, which seems almost ineffectual and in my case it was. Getdataback found every single partition I had ever made since I installed windows a year ago, of course you can only use it with NTFS or FAT. What I'm wondering is there a way to search via cylinder w/ testdisk?

Now maybe I'm confused and the purpose of testdisk is to repair partitions while with getdataback you merely recover your data, and thus you can only do that if the the cylinders hold the correct data or whatever, I'm no data forensic engineer

Hmmm, not sure what your trying to accomplish... are you trying to backup a currupted NTFS drive???

Either way... Knoppix should be able to mount your NTFS drives enough for you to back up your data, however, it cannot repair the MS screwup's that may be on your system... \

KC

oh ... I'm just curious if I missed a switch as I couldn't find it on there website. AFAIK, testdisk only searches the cylinders, but not the sectors like getdataback does and I was just wondering if testdisk had the ability to search sectors. It seems to me a more thorough data recover method to me.

And I'm not really trying to accomplish anything, just wondering for info purposes, as I didn't see anything in the guide at testdisks site.