Hi I have two PC,s and will be networking these. MY problem is the old one needs a rebuild/reformat. Before I do this I want to get some non replaceable photos off it which are quite large in size. The problem I,ve got is the PC wont let me mount either one of the two DVD burners nor will it recognise my external hard via any of the four USB ports. Its not recognised on the network either.

Would appreciate any help.

Thx

This is a real standalone machine! Maybe trying to mount the external USB disk is the easier thing to solve. Give us some details about the system (which linux distribution, which kernel and so on) and show us what you've tried to mount the disk. Any error message?

how about this?
1. remove the hard disk from your old pc
2. plug it in via a usb enclosure to your new pc
3. retrieve all the data from your old hard drive
4. reinsert the hard disk to your old pc

Apologies for the lack of info.

I,m running Ubuntu only on the PC and hope this may help

f disk report

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x6589b897

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 18701 150215751 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 18702 19457 6072570 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 18702 19457 6072538+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Good idea, vonbiber! If the motherboard of the new PC has a port to plug in the old hard drive, the trick is done.

Thanks guys.

But fiddling with an expensive new PC is not an option for me given my lack of skills

yeah I know couple of bolts and a plug or two? I,m might continue to explore the network option

Well, let's try to explore the problems more in details:

1) what happens when you plug-in the external USB hard drive? Have you tried to mount it manually? Does the system complains about something (error messages)?

2) what is the problem with the network connection? What type of network connection do you have?

3) Another option is to boot from a LiveCD like Knoppix and try to mount USB hard drive from there, see if the dvd burner is recognized or if the network is set up. The only problem could be the availability of the CD/DVD reader at boot time.

This scenario is why I keep a puppy or mint cd handy ..

assuming that one or both of the the two DVD burners are working,
then boot with the cd & mount both the old hdd & the external hdd,
& copy any photo's that you need to keep.

Don't boot with the O/S on the old hdd, as it may be corrupted.

Ok this is doing my head in.

When I plug the USB hard drive in nothing happens. Even when I select mount on either of the two USB Icons "Nothing"

I managed to get the network running and have attempted to get my files off the PC by installing sudo apt-get install vsftpd.

I can see the FTP folder I,ve installed and by typeing in the IP adress on the other PC via connect to server I get an empty mounted "Folder" called FTP followed by the IP identification. I,m presuming its connected to PC FTP folder where I installed vsftpd. Thas it thats as far I can get I,ve even tried to copy and paste what I need into the FTP folder but iyt wont let me.

I,m guessing I need to edit /etc/vsftpd.conf so that permission are granted but I get this permission denied message and cant get passed it.

noel@noel-desktop:~$ /etc/vsftpd.conf
bash: /etc/vsftpd.conf: Permission denied


Would appreciate further help.

Thx

1) Maybe the external hard disk is formatted as windows' NTFS. If this is the case you have to install ntfs-3g in order to mount the ext drive with read/write permissions. Here is the Ubuntu documentation about this issue.

Furthermore, to see if the system sees the ext drive when plugged-in (even if it is not mounted) type
in a terminal and post the output here, if in doubt.

2) So the network is ok, now. What OS have you on the new PC? If you have Linux you can simply use scp or sftp. Just be sure to open port 22 on the new PC to accept incoming connections. Also you need the ssh server running on the new PC.

If it is Windows, you can install Putty or even better WinSCP on the new PC and transfer files through the ssh protocol as well. In this case you have to open port 22 on the old PC and run the ssh server. In both cases you don't need a FTP server like vsftp: this just make things more complicate for such an easy task.

Ok thanks,

Here the output
noel@noel-desktop:~$ sudo fdisk -l
[sudo] password for noel:

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x6589b897

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 18701 150215751 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 18702 19457 6072570 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 18702 19457 6072538+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris


The mew PC is running Ubuntu 9.1 64 bit while the old pc is running Ubuntu 8.1 32bit.

I,m also not able to understand what you mean or how to open port 22 not to menyion your comments regarding scp or ssh protocol.

Appreciate the help

1) From the output of fdisk -l I don't see any external disk attached: did you plugged-in before running the command? If this is the case, maybe there is some problem in the plug-n-play configuration (HAL).

2) If you have linux on both machines and both are connected to network, the most straightforward way is to use ssh/scp. SSH is the Secure Shell Protocol which let you do encrypted connections between machines and it is by far the most common way to login to remote machines. Through the SSH protocol you can copy files using the scp command or even sftp to start an interactive session.

The scp command has the same syntax of cp, except that you have to specify the user and the address of the remote machine, for example:
To connect to a machine trough ssh/scp there must be a ssh server (the sshd daemon) running on the remote machine. Also the traffic through port 22 must be allowed by the firewall rules (by default incoming connections are blocked). Take a look at the ubuntu documentation, here and let me know if you have some problem to set-up the connection.