Hard Drive Safety - Help a n00b in need!

[trogdor]

I am a veteran of Linux, but new to knoppix. I was wondering if there is any concievable way that running knoppix off cd-rom could accidently overwrite hard drive data. In other words, does knoppix mount any hard drive automatically?

Thanks in advance.

[tearinghairout]

Hi Trogdor

I was under the impression - at least from the IBM article I read this afternoon - that Knoppix will automatically mount all your hard drive partitions but in read-only mode. If you want to start doing things to them, you have to manually change the access from read-only to read-write.

I have been happily booting Knoppix disks on various wierd and wonderful permutations of hard disk partitions for a while now with no problems at all.

Is your question the result of some actual problem you have encountered, or are you just being cautious before the fact?

Kevin

[trogdor]

Just being cautious . . . wouldn't want to f*ck up my parents' XP computer . . . for the third time. :(

For background, when I knew nothing about linux except that I liked it, I f*cked it up once. Later, Partition Magic 7 crashed while resizing an NTFS partition . . . f*ck up # 2. :oops:

[tearinghairout]

Ouch!

Resizing partitions is always a bit risky regardless of software stability. You know - dog chews through power cable at just the wrong moment etc.

As far as booting Knoppix off CD just to have a play around goes, I would say "go for it".

If you want to start resizing partitions and installing on hard drive... well, as noted above, there are no guarantees. All I can properly suggest is the age-old mantra of "make sure you do a backup before anything that might involve data loss".

However, I will say this. After 15 years in the IT industry, I do not trust software that is closed source, and I do trust software that is open source. Even if I don't personally inspect the source code, I take comfort from the fact that - given the source is there for anyone to see - the authors tend to be more honest about what the software can and can't do, and how stable it really is.

Oh, and another thing, apparently defragging is pretty important before attempting to resize.

Hope this helps
Kevin

[trogdor]

Yeah, I defragged. PM said that Winblows made a bad partition, etc.

Anyhow, I ran Knoppix, and XP still works, so it's good. However, I notice something strange: On my hard drive, I see the partition /boot. Was that a remnant of Knoppix, or something from an old Linux installation on this computer?

Thanks.

[aay]

Hi Trogdor

I was under the impression - at least from the IBM article I read this afternoon - that Knoppix will automatically mount all your hard drive partitions but in read-only mode.

Knoppix will automatically detect all your drives/partitions and put an icon for them on your desktop, but it doesn't automatically mount them. You have to do that on your own. You are correct though that when they are mounted, they are mounted in read only mode. You have to change that if you want to write to them. Don't try this with NTFS.

[tearinghairout]

However, I notice something strange: On my hard drive, I see the partition /boot. Was that a remnant of Knoppix, or something from an old Linux installation on this computer?


I'd say it's most likely someting from an old Linux installation. Some distros do set up a separate boot partition (I know SuSE does). I very much doubt that Knoppix would do anything like this.

[trogdor]

Just a thought . . . it couldn't have created the partition. Am I crazy, or does it take more than 10 seconds to move a 65 gb NTFS partition? :P