Maxtor external hard drive not detected/seen.

[Shadowed State of Mind]

Will Knoppix help? I just got the ISO but I'm somewhat afraid of burning it to a CD. I understand it came from Linux, and I use Windows Vista. As for the problem at hand, this laptop is merely about a week old. The storage device is a year and a half old...well, that's how long I had it and I used it frequently on my old laptop. Anyway. it was working dandy up until last night. It was seen and accessible that same afternoon but between that and the evening something happened that caused it to drop off the face of the laptop. NOTHING can see it. Troubleshooting didn't help. I fear this may be my last resort since some suggest that I pry open the device itself and mount it in an enclosure.

Finally, will this thing go smoothly with Daemon Tools? I'm not sure if any CDs I have have enough space for the ISO.

[Harry Kuhman]

Will Knoppix help? I just got the ISO but I'm somewhat afraid of burning it to a CD. I understand it came from Linux, and I use Windows Vista. As for the problem at hand, this laptop is merely about a week old. The storage device is a year and a half old...well, that's how long I had it and I used it frequently on my old laptop. Anyway. it was working dandy up until last night.
Sad to say, I have several hard drives that Windows can no longer access and Knoppix can't access either, and most were attached to Windows by an external firewire connection. From my observation Windows often trashes such drives beyond repair. However, your problem may be less devastating, maybe only the partition table and not the partitions themselves are damaged. In that case Knoppix may well be able to recover the partition table with gpart or testdisk. I don't think that you can know what your status is without trying.

By the way, I should mention that I have also seen some problems with the way that different versions of Windows compute LBA addresses. I had a major problem years ago on a system that was set up to dual boot between Win95 and Win98. While both OS's could apparently see the same drive partition and could even safely access data from it at first, it turned out that the way each OS computed the LBA was different, and as a result once the partition reachjed a certain level of fullness, each started writing data in different locations compared to where the other would . As a result the partition was completely ruined and all of the data on it was lost. I learned the hard way to never trust different versions of Windows to access data on a Windows partition. I certainly don't know if this is your case or not, but since you mention that you only had the laptop a week but had the storage device much longer, I'm thinking that you used it on a different system before that. And I would not put it past Microsoft to screw their customers again with Vista like they screwed me with Win95 and Win98.


Finally, will this thing go smoothly with Daemon Tools? I'm not sure if any CDs I have have enough space for the ISO.
I'm hard pressed to know what you are saying here. If you are making a CD then Knoppix will not fit on an old 650 meg CD blank, but it will fit on any currently available unused 700 meg CD-R or unused or erased 700 meg CD-RW blank if burnt properly. See the downloading faq for details. If you are trying to burn an ISO with DVD in the name it will not fit on a CD, but will fit on a single level DVD blank if burnt properly. Other than that, if you are just out of media I'm not sure what you think we could say about that.

[Shadowed State of Mind]

The external isn't full. Heck, it became LESS so as I started to unload it bit by bit. Anyway, I can try a System Restore and rewind to a date where I'm sure this thing was able to see the thing. Also, where is the downloading faq? Can't find it.

[Harry Kuhman]

The external isn't full. Heck, it became LESS so as I started to unload it bit by bit. Anyway, I can try a System Restore and rewind to a date where I'm sure this thing was able to see the thing. Also, where is the downloading faq? Can't find it.
Didn't say anything about the drive being full, just that my LBA problem only manifested itself after a certain amount of data was written to the drive, the wacky way that the OSs computed sector addresses differently between Win95 and Win98 only manifested itself after the track number reached a certain point. My drives were not full, but were roached beyond use.

But even if this isn't a LBA computation issue between Vista and a previous OS, the fact remains that I've seen several of my hard drives roached by Windows when in an external case (running Xp in my case and connected by firewire, but I have no reason to think that Vista and USB would give better results). I suggest that others should be as cautious about such external drives with Windows as I have become. Still, it would be worth trying Knoppix, and even gpart or testdisk to see if the data can be recovered. And if Windows is already mucking up the drive then a "System Restore" is not going to help, and it is not unlikely to cause additional problems.

As to the Downloading faq, see the link marked Documentation near the top of this page? After you click it you will be at our wiki. You should be able to find the FAQ from there, there is a link to it on the main page. It contains all of the important information for downloading the ISO, checking it, and burning it properly (as an image and at low speed).

[Shadowed State of Mind]

I have Power2Go and set the burning to its lowest speed. Before it even passes 1% it somehow fails. Again and again.

[Harry Kuhman]

I have Power2Go and set the burning to its lowest speed. Before it even passes 1% it somehow fails. Again and again.
I have no idea what power2go is. I've literally burnt thousands of CDs and DVD and as far as I know this is the first I've ever heard of it. Don't even know if it supports ISO burning, or what it thinks the lowest speed is (very often some burning software will refuse to burn at a low speed on the very same hardware that other burning software can indeed do low speed burns on). If you like and what to use power2go and if it worked I would say go right ahead, but apparently you are having problems of some nature with it. Yo are not passing along enough of the error message for anyone to assist you with it. I would strongly suggest that you look at the free 30 day trial of Nero and try burning the ISO with that.

I don't know about the 6.x versions of Knoppix, and based on how much seems to have been stripped out of it have doubts that it will burn ISO files, but if you download and burn a copy of 5.x Knoppix during the Nero 30 day free trial, you should then be able to use Knoppix 5.x to burn ISO files after the 30 day trial expires. Or, if using XP, you could always make a system restore point before installing Nero; I'm guessing that if you later roll back XP to that restore point you would be able to install the 30 day trial again later. And, of course, if you got any version of Nero with your CD or DVD burner, install and use that. It seems to come with most hardware that I've seen in the last few years.

[Shadowed State of Mind]

Actually, I use Vista. Secondly, Power2Go managed to burn Knoppix into the CD as an image file. After having this thing boot from the CD...nothing. Absolutely nothing. Just started up with no differences whatsoever. What the heck did I do wrong? Was it the wrong Knoppix version or something?! (I put v6.0.1 on there)

[Harry Kuhman]

Actually, I use Vista. Secondly, Power2Go managed to burn Knoppix into the CD as an image file. After having this thing boot from the CD...nothing. Absolutely nothing. Just started up with no differences whatsoever. What the heck did I do wrong? Was it the wrong Knoppix version or something?! (I put v6.0.1 on there)
OK, You use Vista. Nothing that I can say about Vista that hasn't been said thousands of times before.

You say that iyour software managed to burn Knoppix to the CD as an image. I do have my doubts. What do you see on the CD when you look at it from inside Windows? Also, is your boot order set to boot from CD before hard disk in your BIOS, as talked about in the downloading FAQ? You don't give us enough information yet to tell what6 has gone wrong.

At to the version, many people are disappointed with the 6.x Knoppix versions. But that is not your problem, Knoppix 6.x should at least boot you into Knoppix. Once you work out your issues then you very well may want to go back and get some 5.x English languauge versions while they are still available (and even Knoppix 4.02 if you can find it, it was the best version of Knoppix as far as I'm concerned). But for now focus on determining why your 6.x version isn't booting.

[Shadowed State of Mind]

Before, it only appeared as a single image file, which according to the FAQ isn't the correct burn result. So after using Nero instead the results are on par with said FAQ. All I have to do at this point is restart one more time and hope it boots properly. As in, it'll look like what this page depicts: http://www.shockfamily.net/cedric/knoppix/

Finally, as long as this version can perform the functions I expect it to (detecting my supposedly "dead" storage device and saving its data) I don't care what version it is. I'm only using it for said purpose anyway. Still, from what others are saying if Knoppix can't do it then I'm finished until I raise enough money for a professional to do this.

[Shadowed State of Mind]

This just in, Knobbix did nothing. It couldn't see the Maxtor drive. Unless I have loads of cash for the techs at the shop, my digital valuables are stranded forever (assuming anything's still in there)

[Harry Kuhman]

Well, you can always take comfort in the knowledge that if it was important there would have been a backup.