Retrieving documents and photos from hard drive
 

I have recently installed Puppy Linux because my Windows OS crashed and I could not find the license number and did not want to pay $180 for a new one.So far This OS looks good but quite different to Windows so I am having difficulty finding how to retrieve my photos and documents from the computer.
I have been able to find the relevant files but I can't see how to copy or print them.
I would like to put them onto CD and transfer them to my laptop which is running Windows 7.

Albert

I do not use Puppy .
But does puppy have k3b , being a cd writing program ?
If so try to drag and drop it on place in k3b where one puts the file to burn it on a cd

Well you could cp the file.

$ cp /old_location/input.type /new_location/output.type

You could setup an ftp server on the source computer and if the two are networked together.

C:\> ftp -i <ip of ftp computer>
> cd /path
> ls
> mget *.jpg
> disconnect
> quit

Which might require some setup and skills. And can be quite slow, I think I was doing 1GB per 20 minutes over a 10/100 ethernet connection. Or was that the WiFi speed? Compared to a thumb drive or USB docking station, slow as molasses.

If you just want optical backups. Not that optical media is to be trusted for backups.

$ mkdir disc_4p7gb_max
$ mv stuff* ./disc_4p7gb_max/
$ touch image.iso
$ growisofs -J -R -Z image.iso=./disc_4p7gb_max
(used to just be mkisofs -o image.iso ./path/, but not an option in recent distro versions for me)
(touch is needed as growisofs doesn't seem capable of coping if the file doesn't already exist)
$ growisofs -dvd-compat -Z /dev/dvd=image.iso
(to burn a copy)

A bit needy as you basically end up with three copies of everything. The original files, the directory full of copies, and an image of that copy. You can of course bypass the image and just burn it from the directory. But the iso lets you verify that the final size does not exceed the max capacity. Since the iso9660 file sysytem adds to the total girth by a small amount. Plus it's hard to see actual girth with just du and df. And the iso lets you mount it loopback style to ensure that it kept long filenames and other I wish I knew that before I wasted a disc stuff. Bear in mind that no one file can be larger than 4GB (4,3##,.....) even though the disc holds 4.7GB (4,70#,.....). That is a limitation of iso9660. Other options for a filesystem on the optical disc, but you might not be able to read said disc in windows.

If your windows OS crashed because of a faulty drive, you might want to dd an image of the drive first and foremost. dd of the partitions to so you can mount them. This way you minimize the actual I/O on a potential could die any second device. And there's probably a few apps / gui's now that automate / simplify this process by now. The above being more old school. As in when all else fails. Without installing any new software (depending on your system). And other I don't know how to do it any other way concerns.

That was for DVD-R or similar media. CDROMs hold 700MB, not 4.7GB (650MB on older discs). Otherwise that's the only difference.

To find them.

$ find /path/to/base/location/ -iname '*.jpg*'

And you should find what you're looking for and a whole lot of other stuff too, but you can narrow that search down. You can even pipe it to a file and use that file to feed your copy process. And edit out any junk from said file. I do this all the time to ensure that I don't get the wrong things.

$ find /path/ -iname '*.jpg*' 2>&1 | tee temp.log
$ nano temp.log
$ cat temp.log | while read INPUT; do cp $INPUT /path/to/new/location/; done

Change the wild cards, path, and extension stuff to your needs. There's also a find syntax for filetype versus filename, but I'm not that familiar with it myself.

From a copy of the partition(s).

$ dd if=/dev/hda1 of=image.dd
# mount -o loop,umask=0222 -t ntfs image.dd /mount/point
$ cd /mount/point/

And do whatever is needed. Of course all of this assumes that you have enough space to make copies and images and such. If you don't, it's a little harder to do as you have to go in much smaller chunks based on the capacity you do have. Which gets old quick and completely unnecessary these days with $100 1TB HDDs and $50 docking stations. It's a bit of money, but the time and headache that can save you... You don't even have to setup a network or burn discs with that tech. Just copy to the USB storage device. Plug it into the OTHER computer and copy there. Done. Delete the stuff you don't want later.