I'm glad to find out about TestDisk. It seems like a good thing to have in the toolbox. GNU, too!

very handy imo, for the size of the program its VERY powerful

definatly gonna hang on to it

I think I am in need of these two files. But one thing, I can't boot up my computer, do I have to burn these files and make it a bootable disk?

In Test Disk, I downloaded the http://www.cgsecurity.org/testdisk-5.7.win.zip file. So I just extract it, and burn the files correct? Or do I need to only burn the files in the 'win' folder.

I'm confuse and only 1 cd left to use. Please help.!

i have a spare working XP drive that i use for diagnostics and repairs - i booted up w/ that and ran all the tests on the drive i was repairing form that drive

im now on the Geek Squad in BestBuy and i use this program CONSTANTLY...i even integrated it w/ my PE that i built because its so useful

first thing you have to do is analyse the disc, then write the partition structure....once that is done go into advanced i think and analyse the bootsector, its best to go ahead and make a new one anyways so once that is done, you should be good
but if not then your problem lies elsewhere

lemme know where you're at

are you sure you need such a tool.
can't you just boot from the cd and re-install lilo ?

egag

yea im pretty sure hes got the same problem i did
im talkin to him over AIM so....i think i might be able to help him out

ah...ok

good luck eh...

egag

Just as a side issue, I thought the latest Knoppix shipped with testdisk installed.

Then there is systemrescue CD - I recommend everybody have a copy of both handy at all times.

i allways make a copy of the mbr with "dd" and save it in /etc and /~.
so i can allways restore with a cd.

egag

Guess that makes you a grub user

oh no, why ?......i use lilo.

egag

Been many years since I used lilo, but if I was relying on a backup of the MBR, I'd reckon I'd want to append that dd command to every lilo command I ran.

well..that backup contains the partition table....
but then again, if the mbr is screwed up, i wouldn't be able to mount those partitions ...aaaaarh!

just moved the backups to my other hd
( never needed those backups )

thanks for making me think eh .....

egag

is knoppix a good tool for repairing Win9X/2kX drives?

Ahhhh .... maybe
I try not to repair anything. I'm *much* happier copying data off to another drive, and using that. Repairing the original disk is generally just an academic exercise.
I've recently had 3 drives (2 SATA, one (E)IDE) crash - on the one machine, all at the same time. None were recoverable in the normal sense (i.e. I was able to continue using them), but I got data off one of them via Knoppix.
I lost some data since the last round of backups, but that's life.
Data is (typically) important, O/Ss ain't - they're easy to retrieve. I don't mix the two - my data is always on separate partitions, and where possible separate physical disks.
Even on my play systems.