HELP! Need to access HD! Will pay!

zz9pa

ianian99 wrote:

i tried using knoppix and a couple others but never sussed how to access the hdd

Normally under linux you can (the # is the linux 'root' prompt)

# cat /proc/partitions

This should tell you all the available partitions

eg :
major minor #blocks name

8 0 71687325 sda
8 1 40131 sda1
8 2 2008125 sda2
8 3 69633742 sda3
8 16 244198584 sdb
8 17 102398278 sdb1
8 18 141797722 sdb2

Normally - your drive will have some partitions - each partition should end in a number (normally 1-4). So - if you see a number try mounting that.
Not all partitions are used for user disk space - some might be swap space...
(This is also useful when you connect a pen drive!)

anyway if i'd loaded knoppix from a cd on that system - I might try :

# mkdir /tmp/mnt_sda1
# mkdir /tmp/mnt_sda2
# mkdir /tmp/mnt_sda3
# mkdir /tmp/mnt_sdb1
# mkdir /tmp/mnt_sda2
# mount /dev/sda1 /tmp/mnt_sda1
# mount /dev/sda2 /tmp/mnt_sda2
# mount /dev/sda3 /tmp/mnt_sda3
# mount /dev/sdb1 /tmp/mnt_sdb1
# mount /dev/sdb2 /tmp/mnt_sdb2

I could then look around those directories I'd created to see what did get mounted and if I could do anything useful with it....

going2die_rich

You can get a new Hard Drive from Ebuyer for £40. Simply get that, install XP on that and put your other drive as slave. You can then back up the data how you like (either burning it to discs or just moving it over to the new hard drive). Once your done just format the other drive and install Xp again and use it as your primary drive. You'll have the other drive as a backup for future use or you could duplicate anything important by saving it on both drives. That way you can simply do a straight format if the problem ever occurs again.