Mounting a HDD? BackUp issues.

[b.line]

Hello,
I have been struggling with a boot problem on my XP laptop...similar to many others.
I ran the knoppix 6.0.1 live CD but my hdd file system did not automatically mount as discussed in an earlier thread.
I was reluctant to mount the drive (write to it) as I have files in it that I would really like to recover.
I shut down Knoppix and tried a reboot with the XP installation disk which eventually brought me to the dos prompt through the repair option.
I ran chkdsk /r , which took about an hour to complete and then tried to reboot...WHICH WORKED...I ran spybot and adaware with no major threats found so I decided to mount an external hdd and get a backup of first my documents and then I planned to do a complete backup for ease of reloading.
The moment I plugged in the external drive, my laptop froze and will not reboot...go figure.
THis morning I rebooted Knoppix and the HDD was automatically mounted! ...go figure again.
I would like to copy the content of "my documents (XP)" to the external HDD (which, by the way, was immediately recognized) but not mounted. Interestingly, my memory stick was immediately recognized and mounted and could be used for storage except it is too small.

What I would like to know is:

1. Is it likely that mounting the HDD will corrupt any of my XP files?
I recognize this may be superstition on my part but I am not sure that Knoppix doesn't attempt to partition the drive to make room for itself. SO...DOES KNOPPIX PLAY WELL ENOUGH WITH XP TO SHARE DISK SPACE WITHOUT CONFLICT? They are both ntfs.

2. I want to backup my files to my external HDD but am not sure exactly how to do it (as it is not currently mounted). In the "My Documents" screen I attempted to drag and drop the folder unsucessfully to the memory stick. Is this just a windows thing? I need to know how to do this, so precise instructions and/or links to documentation for file transfers (in the explorer-type screen) would be greatly appreciated.

3. Can anyone explain this progression of events? Does this sound like a good plan? Any potential problems I am not seeing?

4. This also seems like a good forum for a smallish rant so, here goes.

I have a long, blighted history with Microsoft. I took my first computer classes at LSU in 1974 when we still punched cards. I enjoyed MS-DOS and held on to it until the Windows 3.x GUI became such a force in the marketplace that my clients were asking for it. Under intense pressure from my biggest client I oversaw his office conversion to the new OS and promptly lost the account due to the instability of the release...death by blue screen of death. Since that time, the Gates plan has been to trump my planning with planned obsolescence, push me (and my clients) away from troubleshooting with distributed, generational and layered programming and canned utilities, and has managed to run the cost of computing through the roof and to their account by defeating any and all hints of simplicity, legacy programming and a reduction of viable command line tools. I was disappointed to find such a poverty of available dos commands...obviously Mr. Gates does not value my files (or my work) as highly as I do. It is tax season and the same thing happened last year (one week earlier). The cost of doing business with Microsoft has become too dear. The open source community has, today, gained another convert. They will not notice and I am glad because it is prima facia evidence of their inevitable demise...rant over

Thanks in advance,
b.line

[Harry Kuhman]

If you have a hard drive with one or more NTFS partitions, then yes, in my opinion it is very likely that Knoppix will corrupt the partition if you write to it. You may or may not be aware of the corruption immediately, you might even save a lot of important stuff and think that things are working just fine, but the corruption will eventually catch up with you. I say in my opinion. Many other people have reported corruption from writing to NTFS. Some people claim it is now safe. I don't believe it and feel my data is too important to risk. If your data is less important and you don't want to hear this, then give it a shot.

Knoppix can write to the various FAT partitions just fine. But the default nature of Knoppix is to mount a partition as read-only, to prevent novice users from destroying their data and then blaming Linux or Knoppix. If you want to write to such a partition you must make it writeable. Prior to version 6 this could be done by right-clicking on the partition icon. You can also use the remount option in the mount command, see man mount for details. The right click approach may not work in 6.x (lots of things don't work in 6.x), but the mount command approach should still work.

If you want to back up files to a NTFS drive I strongly suggest only writing to it with Windows (and even Windows often will corrupt a NTFS drive). For such recovery with Knoppix I boot Knoppix on the failing Windows system and transfer recovered files across a network to a Windows box, which I have write to the NTFS partition attached to it.

[b.line]

Thanks for the reply

I suspected as much and I do, in fact, value these particular data quite highly. I doubt I'm lucky enough to write to this disc and not corrupt the very files I'm concerned with.

Unfortunately, I do not have a network to make this really easy so I'm guessing my best bet now is a new hard drive reloaded with XP and a USB enclosure for my old drive for seamless file transfer. That's do-able enough.

I'll be back in a couple of days with some questions about a dual boot so I can run some purely windows software and begin my migration to one of the Linux families. This lightweight Knoppix is really impressive...I will probably move it to the new drive and begin my transition from it. I read you were somewhat unimpressed with this version but to a former Windows user it looks and test drives pretty well.

Maybe I'll download the last of the 5 series and have a look at the man mount documentation.

I went to sourceforge and looked up the PCMan guys hoping for documentation but did not find anything. Any suggestions where? I apologize for the "hold my hand" request but I'm brand new to this ... I'm a pretty quick study so I will try not to unduly burden you with things i can find. Seems like now when you run a search engine the signal to noise ratio can almost defeat you. I'm pretty sure there are excellent resources out there being obscured by the clamour.

Thanks again,
b.line

[Harry Kuhman]

An external hard drive, with a FAT partition, may well be an option, as long as no file is 4 gig or larger.

Alternately you might want to burn files to disc, but that involves either having multiple optical drives or some way to boot Knoppix and still leave the optical disc free. The toram option may work, but that involves having the CD version and enough memory to hold the entire CD in RAM. Alternately you might boot from an ISO on the hard disk. Or you might hust bypass The need for lots of memory by booting a smaller distro "toram" such as PuppyLinux.

You could e-mail yourself files. That can be slow since it's done at Internet connect speeds rather than local network speeds, but it would get you a copy and if you use a service like Gmail even provide a good backup of the files.

And of course you might consider building a network. If you're lacking a second computer just ask around, many people (including myself) would be glad to find homes for older systems and someone may give you a system that would be fine for network file service for free. If you don't have a router to easily set up a local network, well shame on you. These devices are very cheap and extremely important for safely connecting to the Internet.

Good luck.

[b.line]

Hello Again,

I have isolated what I believe to be the source of my problems and i thought some other folks might find it useful.

When I was able to boot the last time, the first thing my computer did was begin prompting me to reboot to complete an automated download from Microsoft. At first, I thought this was a coincidence since I am setup to automatically get the latest service pacs to close the plethora of known security issues with their products. As it turns out, two worms (Blaster and Nachi) apparently work together to hide, reinfect and propogate across the web. See article ID 833330 on the Microsoft website for details.

Unfortunately, there is little that can be done (data safe, that is) to fix the problem other than the procedure we have contemplated. The rub is that if you save the wrong files you are doomed to repeat the process at potentially random intervals as I have done. As in make a complete backup for reinstall on the new drive under the erroneous assumption that the hard drive is mechanically compromised. There is nothing wrong with the drive and i am not going to be lucky to get the files off before it makes it's last gasp. It is a software problem in my case...a pair of virus working together. Last year at this same time, I had this same problem and resolved it by restoring a complete backup...it activated again this year and knocked me out again. I thought the precision timing was a coincidence as well.

Just my two cents worth...you be the judge.

b.line


P. S. While I was writing this I noticed you have replied again.

I like the idea of the external with a fat partition so I will go that way first since I already have one.

I have several computers but have not fooled with networking since Novell was a miracle (and a massive pain in the foot). I understand it is a lot simpler now.

All food for thought...THanks again.

b.line

[eco2geek]

I'm with Harry; I know it sounds superstitious, but almost every time I've used Linux to write to an ntfs partition, I've ended up having to run chkdsk on it. Especially with multi-gigabyte files, like disk images. A gazillion people will tell you that I'm wrong; that using the ntfs-3g driver is completely safe. YMMV.

(As an aside, when the heck did the plain old "ntfs" driver become read/write?)

As Harry said, consider buying an SATA or IDE hard drive (they're cheap), and sticking it in an external hard drive enclosure with a USB or Firewire connection (also cheap). Format it as FAT32 (aka "vfat") and you're in business, except for the 4GB file size limitation.

If your BIOS is compatible, you could even partition the external hard drive (using, for example, gparted), install Linux on it, and boot from it.

Here's the mount man page (http://www.linuxcommand.org/man_pages/mount8.html). See The Linux Documentation Project (http://tldp.org/) for more information.

<edit> Since you posted about your virus problem before I got this post off -- if you've got a Windows computer that's directly connected to the Internet, you absolutely must have a firewall (either software-based, like the free ZoneAlarm (http://www.zonealarm.com/security/en-us/home.htm?lid=en-us), or, even better, an external router that sits between your DSL or cable modem and your computer, and does NAT (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_address_translation) -- or even better, both). (You can also set up an old computer as a router using a specialized Linux distro (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_router_or_firewall_distributions).) And you absolutely must run always-on anti-virus software, like the free avast! antivirus (http://www.avast.com/).

My brother once got infected with a worm while using Windows and a 56k dialup connection. I kid you not.

[Harry Kuhman]

.... As it turns out, two worms (Blaster and Nachi) apparently work together to hide, reinfect and propogate across the web. ...

I have several computers but have not fooled with networking since Novell was a miracle...
I too worked with Netware, worked for a vendor even back to the days of arcnet and big 20 meg file servers that took all night to format. Yes, things have changed. As to that router and those worms: I absolutely would not operate a computer on the Internet without a router acting as a firewall. Even have a spare router in my travel bag in case I want to plug in somewhere that I don't trust. Besides providing the backbone for a network, a router provides the very important function of blocking worms from reaching your system. Of course, a router will not protect you if you do stupid things, like download "key generators" from warez sites and run them on an unprotected system, or read mail with Outlook, but if you are reasonably cautious you can operate safely on the Internet and your biggest threat to your data will remain Microsoft itself, not lesser malware that a cheap router with a NAT firewall would block.

[b.line]

I sincerely appreciate the advice and conversation.

Got my files off the old fashion way...copied to thumb drives...as God intended...<joke light>

I intend to run a little experiment when I receive my HDD enclosure...had to order the ATA model...I'm going to attempt to repair the XP installation to see if I would have gotten away with it. I'll let you know how it goes.

Well on my way through the documentation links provided...pretty good choices...I'm relatively sure it would have taken me a while to find that equal sources.

I am glad to see the a modern system that looks so much like DOS...I feel at home already...looking forward to having the time to make the transition.

I was telling one of my clients about my plans to exit the Gates Plan...he was surprisingly interested to get away from MicroSquish.

I digress, thanks again

b.line

[sXeKJB]

Hmm, I've been writing to a mounted NTFS partition HEAVILY for over a month now, and not had one issue. I'll let you know if anything becomes corrupts and goes to crap :lol:

[cvevans]

<snip>
Knoppix can write to the various FAT partitions just fine. But the default nature of Knoppix is to mount a partition as read-only, to prevent novice users from destroying their data and then blaming Linux or Knoppix. If you want to write to such a partition you must make it writeable. Prior to version 6 this could be done by right-clicking on the partition icon. You can also use the remount option in the mount command, see man mount for details. The right click approach may not work in 6.x (lots of things don't work in 6.x), but the mount command approach should still work.


Knoppix 6.01 defaults to mount everything read/WRITE IIRC.
To mount read-only, I had to open terminal and use mount -o ro