C drive (NTFS) not available in CD-Booted Knoppix (HP box)

[j.drake]

Edited to clarify 8-4-03.

Problem: I boot from Knoppix CD, and the C: drive (NTFS) is not available to me. HDa1 is the drive D: recovery drive (FAT 32). HDb1 is the G: HD (NTFS). There is no HDa2. Both optical drives are available, as is the memory stick (provided that the stick is loaded in the slot).

My Hardware: I have an HP Pavilion computer (Pavilion 735n) that's approximately 6 months old, which came with an 80 MB HD, WinXP preinstalled. I'm not yet ready to jump to Linux, so I want to preserve the original configuration for now. So far, I am running Knoppix off the CD. For those of you unfamiliar with newer HPs, there are no backup CDs, and the factory HD is partitioned. The main partition is formatted in NTFS, and serves as my C: drive in Windows. The other partition contains all of the system recovery files, and is hooked into a system recovery utility, in case the registry gets corrupted or I do something stupid. This second partition with the recovery stuff is formatted in FAT32, and defined in Windows as D:. Drive letters E: and F: represent a DVD+R/RW and a CD-ROM drive, respectively. G: is an 80GB NTFS HD that I added. H: and I: are for photo flash ROMs (e.g., Sony Memory Stick).


Hypothesis: I have heard that Linux does not like having an NTFS drive contain the MBR, and that if you want to install Linux on a hard drive and select your boot option at power up, you have to have a FAT32 partition containing your MBR. I had assumed that since I was booting from CD, and Knoppix was not on the HD, that this would not be an issue. What I don't understand is why G: (an NTFS drive) is available and C: is not. I'm guessing that it has something to do with the MBR being on C:, but I don't understand why that is a problem when booting from CD.

Any ideas or suggestions?

If I have to partition the main drive to define another FAT32 partition for the MBR (which I may eventually do anyway if I get comfortable with Linux), can anyone recommend a good step-by-step? I'm a little bit reluctant to do anything to change the factory default Windows drive letter designations, in case I ever do have to recover the HD - I don't want it to barf if it's looking for C: or D:, but they are redefined as X: and Y:, for example. If I have room in D:, can I move the MBR there (since it's FAT32)? Can anyone foresee a problem with that?

Thanks for any and all help.

[A. Jorge Garcia]

Wow, you have some complicated set-up on your PC. If, as you say, you're not ready to marry the Penguin (that's good, btw, as HIS name is TUX), maybe you'd like to see the following two posts (also in General Support):

HOWTO: Poor Man's Dual Boot PC,
Faster Boot Floppy.

In these posts I describe how to copy the CD to had1 and boot from a floppy intsead of doing a full hd install. You may want to play with this before marrying anyone. You will have to have a FAT32 partition for this, but it only has to be the size of the CD.

I just refreshed these posts so you can find them easily by adding a reply to the end of each calling your attention to them as they were lost way back in the archives somewhere....

Enjoy,

[j.drake]

Wow, you have some complicated set-up on your PC.

Actually, it's just a stock HP 735n with a second HD.
http://h20015.www2.hp.com/en/document.jhtml?lc=en&docName=c00005300
One of the reasons I bought it was to burn home movies to DVD, and I quickly found out that you need A LOT of HD storage to do that, hence the second HD. Anyway, the only reason I went into detail about the configuration was to help explain that it's the recovery partition (D: ) that Linux is picking up as hda1, rather than my C: partition. The second HD is hdb1.

Thanks for floating your threads. No doubt they will be helpful if I go that route. So do you think it's a problem that my C: partition is NTFS, and that this is causing the problem? Or do you think it's something else entirely?

[A. Jorge Garcia]

I'm not sure why you're getting this behavior from the KNOPPIX CD on your system. Maybe you could ask Stephen or Dave Bechtel, both of whom have lots of Linux experience and are very helpful!

Good luck,

[j.drake]

Maybe you could ask Stephen or Dave Bechtel, both of whom have lots of Linux experience and are very helpful!

Stephen or Dave (or anyone else), if you're listening, I sure could use your wisdom!!!

[andrewdodd13]

Just a quick suggestion:- You're not using a SCSI primary HD are you?
In that case just look for /sda1 (me thinks). It could be somethin else! :roll:

:::Cut:::
Sorry for getting ure hopes up!
80 GB !!Ultra DMA!!
5400 rpm
I'm pretty sure DMA is IDE so forget it!
:::Paste::: :oops:

[j.drake]

I'm pretty sure DMA is IDE so forget it!

Yeah, it is. Besides, the recovery partition is showing up as hda1. If it were SCSI, then it would be showing up as sda1 too.

[j.drake]

So, have any of you seen this before? Is this an XP/NTFS thing as I suspect, or do you folks know of other XP/NTFS configurations where Knoppix does recognize the primary partition of the main HD.

If I need to provide more information, let me know.

If you're not sure what's going on, or can't help me, can anyone please recommend a resource which might be of some assistance to me? According to the using Knoppix FAQs, you should be able to read off an NTFS drive, and I can, in fact, read the G: drive, which is NTFS. But Knoppix isn't even recognizing the existence of my C: drive.

[garyng]

try this :

cat /proc/partitions

This would give you a better idea what partitions linux recognize

Microsoft like to play around with the partition table(well may be the vendor as well as they like the idea of 'recovery' partition etc.) which can be very confusing. Someone on the GRUB thread(the boot loader) once mentioned that instead of using the first partition entry in the MBR, Microsoft choose to skip the first 3 and put the partition information(the only primary) in the 4th(last) entry which creates a lot of trouble for other system.

[pepsi_max2k]

I think I've got exactly the same problem. I just used Knoppix for the first time yesterday and I'm pretty sure it only showed two 390B hard drives on the ram or cd, but not the main hard drive.

It's a 60GB drive with the whole thing in a single partition with windows xp installed. It's also in a HP Pavillion 7965.

I think HP use their own version of system recovery or product activation so it might be something to do with that.

[j.drake]

I think I've got exactly the same problem. I just used Knoppix for the first time yesterday and I'm pretty sure it only showed two 390B hard drives on the ram or cd, but not the main hard drive.

It's a 60GB drive with the whole thing in a single partition with windows xp installed. It's also in a HP Pavillion 7965.

I think HP use their own version of system recovery or product activation so it might be something to do with that.

So, can you see the D: drive (system recovery file partition of the main HD)? According to the HP website, your model didn't ship with separate recovery disks either, so I assume that they did the same thing with yours as they did with mine - to partition off a D: drive in FAT32, just large enough to hold the recovery files. Alternatively, I suppose they may have put the recovery files in a hidden folder on the C: drive. Anyway, I can see this D: partition in Knoppix, but not the C:, and Knoppix assumes that the D: partition is hda1.

[pepsi_max2k]

sorry mr, i messed up :oops: i can see the main partition now.

there's two hard disk icons on the desktop, one must be the hp recovery thing labled hda1 and it's got a hp folder and other stuff in it, the other is labled hda2 and has got the main windows stuff on it.

either they really weren't there first time, i didn't look hard enough through the folders or i'm just blind . :(

[j.drake]

Well, so much for my hypothesis, then.

[j.drake]

Well, I put Knoppix aside for a while, and came back to it last night. As a reminder, appx 4 gig of my 80 gig primary HD was partitioned out at the factory for WinXP & HP system recovery (as D:, FAT 32), with the rest of my primary drive partitioned in NTFS as C:, while the 80 gig NTFS slave HD I installed is G:. Knoppix can see G: (as hdb1) and D: (as hda1) but not C:, and I still don't know why. :?

OK, last night, I was in Windows, moving a bunch of directories and data from G: to C:. After I was done, I booted the Knoppix CD. As usual, hda1 was D:, hdb1 was G:, and no C: - no surprise. What was really weird, though, was that hdb1 displayed all the files and directories that I had cut from G: and pasted to C:. What's more, I could open those deleted files and directories in hdb1, as if they were still there!

I realize that deleting data in Windows doesn't really delete the data, but I thought that it somehow marked the data as deleted. Apparently, Knoppix doesn't care that it's marked deleted (at least in NTFS), and is able to read these files that Windows no longer can!

Spooky!

Sort of opens up a new world of possibilities for file recovery. Has anyone else encountered this???

Oh, one other factor which may enter into this - I have Norton SystemWorks installed on the computer. NSW alters somewhat the behavior of the recycle bin in Windows, leaving some files as "protected". Could it be that this has some role in these strange goings on??

Until I can get my arms around why Knoppix appears to behave in such a strange and unpredictable way w/r/t file management, I'm afraid to try a dual-boot HD install. :roll: Anyway, I've initiated a defrag on C: and G:, and we'll see if this answers any questions.

[j.drake]

SOLVED!

As far as I can tell, all of my hypotheses were dead wrong (which probably explains why no one else knew the answer either). Norton Utilities (Windows) comes with an application called GoBack, by Roxio. The program is intended to facilitate undoing stupid mistakes that cause your computer to have problems (not that I would ever need such a thing, of course :wink: ). WinXP has this ability already, but I figured that it didn't cost any more, and might help.

Anyway, as I was clearing off my G: drive in preparation for repartitioning it to accept an HD install, I ran into problems because GoBack installed several MB of hidden files. So, when I deactivated GoBack, I went into Knoppix to use qtparted, and son-of-a-gun, there was my C: drive!! I don't fully understand why GoBack apparently kept Knoppix from seeing an NTFS partition of one drive, but not the NTFS partition of another drive, but it seems that it did. So, in case anyone else has this problem, they can read that it had nothing to do with the make of my computer or the way in which they defined the recovery partition. They can also read that GoBack apparently created many more problems than it prevented :evil: