TheScullster wrote:
"Twayne" typed:


Hi all

Sorry guys I was given some duff info yesterday!
I now have the PC (Packard Bell) available and on start
up the actual error messages a

Verifying DMI Pool Data ................
BOOTMGR is missing
Press Ctrl-Alt-Del to restart

Has a Win XP logo on front.

So the question is pretty much the same:

Should I be able to access the data from Ubuntu CD boot?

Also, I have used the terminal "force" commands to gain
access to a laptop drive previously.
But I know very little about Linux software and possible
corruption of data. Can using these force commands to
enable disk access actually cause data corruption?
The PC I'm looking at has valuable family pics on
apparently and I certainly don't want to risk rendering
the disk unrecoverable.
Thanks

Phil
Since there hasn't been a direct response to the question of a live 'nix
CD, YES, you should be able to access the data on the hard drive. I don't
know what "force" commands refers to; that's a new one to me.

Can you boot to Safe Mode? If so, then you can run Start; Programs;
Accessories; System Tools; System Information and that will tell you what
the OS is and its SP status too and much more. Another tool called SIW
(Google for it) is a super-System Information program with a lot more data
about the machine in its output.

Paul has given you an excellent treatise IMO on the overall system and
it's pretty thorough from the aspect of how to prevent damaging the disk,
backing it up first before any work is done to recover anything, and so
forth. By backing it up, you can at least always go back to the original
problem and start over again if you have to. I'd recommend backing up to
DVDs or better yet another HD (external type) just so nothing can
accidentally happen to the original data, which can then be considered a
control point.

Assuming there are multiple hard drives, it might be easiest to just pop
in a bootable hard drive with any windows OS on it and set to Master if
it's an IDE system, and set the other HD as a slave if it's an IDE system.
SATA drives are easier; see the docs to see which cable is for the boot
disk or simply trace it down visually.
Then boot from the replaced bootable HD and use that to look at the
other drives, logical or physical, to see if you can get hold of the
photos you need. Unless you have a hardware problem, this should work. If
no joy, then read Paul's information carefully and give it a go. The most
important thing is to create the backup immediately and never allow that
backup to be changed in any way. I usually put them to DVDs just so they
cannot be compromised by mistake.

Let us know how it comes out in the end, OK?

Twayne`



Thanks Twayne

I have a 500Gb Hitachi USB drive available.
Will this connect OK to the Ubuntu session and allow copying of files off
the HD?
I have successfully copied to a 2Gb flash drive, but some of the video files
are large and there's lots of them.

ISTR some of these external USB drives need to install software to make
their entire capacity writable.
I just attached the drive to my Windoze PC and it seemed to be "found"
without any special measures/installation.

Thanks

Phil

The USB drive should be very convenient, and not be a problem to get
working. If you're going to have problems, it would be with the
usage of a large disk, with a USB adapter chip that can't handle it.
But if you bought a pre-assembled USB drive, they've taken care
of compatibility for you.

If you went back to Windows 98, you might need to add some
third party software. But later OSes, should use the built-in
USB Mass Storage protocol stack, to automatically make it available.

If the 500GB was much larger than the "sick" drive, you may have
enough room to store several aspects of your recovered or
backed up data. You can store an "image" of the sick disk,
like this -

dd if=/dev/hda of=/somedisk/wholedisk.dd

The output file in that case, is being stored as a large file
in the /somedisk file system. When I do stuff like that, I might
use an NTFS partition (which handles large files), or
an EXT2 that is set up for large files. (If you put your mind to it,
and use ancient tools for making EXT2, you can actually make one
that refuses to store large files.) In any case, as long as
your file system can hold gigabyte sized files properly, you
can back up the whole disk as a single file. Having done so,
you can also store other files right next to it, if you want.
So your 500GB disk could become a large "garbage dump" by the
time you're done.

The other method I was mentioning, was just doing raw disk to
raw disk transfer. But you can also transfer raw disk
to a single file, and it is much the same.

Paul