Hard Drive Salvage from corrupted Windows XP NTFS drive

[kidsatacrux]

Here's the situation:

A couple of bored days ago, I had decided to try and make my guinea pig test drive, the old 12 gig SCSI IDE hard drive, which had Xandros Linux on it, into a game drive for a bunch of old Windows 98 games.

I had a main 80 gig Serial ATA drive with Windows XP installed on it too.

In spite of changing the boot sequence in BIOS to where only the Windows 98 CD ROM would boot and the old 12gig side kick hard drive would boot afterwards,

To make a long story cut to the chase and short, I managed to somehow corrupt the main hard drive so that Windows XP won't load anymore . . .

Worse, though the 80gig drive use to be mounted by the Knoppix 2.6.6 Kernel, now when I run Knoppix it just recognizes it with the icon

[hde1] but WON'T MOUNT.

It gives the error message:

"Could not mount device.
mount: I could not determine file system. None was specified"


-----------------------------------

Fortunately I've backed up all my real important files on a CD ROM I burnt before I did this experiment, but still would like to salvage some of the nifty downloads that weren't backed up on that 80 gig thing. ASAP

------------------

[kidsatacrux]

having tried to write all this script
_____________
knoppix@ttyp0[knoppix]$ mkdr /tmp/hd
bash: mkdr: command not found
knoppix@ttyp0[knoppix]$ mkdir /tmp/hd
knoppix@ttyp0[knoppix]$ mount -t ntfs /dev/hde1
mount: only root can do that


knoppix@ttyp0[knoppix]$ su
root@ttyp0[knoppix]# mount -t ntfs /dev/hde1

The consol spits out this:


Usage: mount -V : print version
mount -h : print this help
mount : list mounted filesystems
mount -l : idem, including volume labels
So far the informational part. Next the mounting.
The command is `mount [-t fstype] something somewhere'.
Details found in /etc/fstab may be omitted.
mount -a [-t|-O] ... : mount all stuff from /etc/fstab
mount device : mount device at the known place
mount directory : mount known device here
mount -t type dev dir : ordinary mount command
Note that one does not really mount a device, one mounts
a filesystem (of the given type) found on the device.
One can also mount an already visible directory tree elsewhere:
mount --bind olddir newdir
or move a subtree:
mount --move olddir newdir
A device can be given by name, say /dev/hda1 or /dev/cdrom,
or by label, using -L label or by uuid, using -U uuid .
Other options: [-nfFrsvw] [-o options] [-p num].
For many more details, say man 8 mount .
------------------


And I still have this error message when trying to open the hard drive hde1 from the KDE desktop:

"Could not mount device.
The reported error was:
mount: I could not determine the filesystem type, and none was specified "

[CrashedAgain]

I think you would have to do

mount -t ntfs /dev/hde1 /mnt/hde1

so that mount know where to mount it. This can be omitted only if you are using all default settings...ie what is listed in fstab.
BTW, what is listed in your /etc/fstab file?

You could also try running qtparted or cfdisk to see what format (if any) they think /hde1 is formatted to. I once lost my windows drive (hda1) because it somehow got switched to a type 1C (hidden Fat32) instead of a type 0B (FAT32). Merely switching it back cured everything except the hangover.

[kidsatacrux]

knoppix@ttyp0[knoppix]$ mount -t ntfs /dev/hde1 /mnt/hde1
mount: only root can do that

knoppix@ttyp0[knoppix]$ su

root@ttyp0[knoppix]# mount -t ntfs /dev/hde1 /mnt/hde1
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hde1,
or too many mounted file systems
root@ttyp0[knoppix]#

[kidsatacrux]

thank you for your suggestions

I think you would have to do

mount -t ntfs /dev/hde1 /mnt/hde1

so that mount know where to mount it. This can be omitted only if you are using all default settings...ie what is listed in fstab.
BTW, what is listed in your /etc/fstab file?

You could also try running qtparted or cfdisk to see what format (if any) they think /hde1 is formatted to. I once lost my windows drive (hda1) because it somehow got switched to a type 1C (hidden Fat32) instead of a type 0B (FAT32). Merely switching it back cured everything except the hangover.

I'm sorry I really am an amateur at Linux script and file systems. Where would the /etc/fstab file be?

Where can I access the programs qtparted & cfdisk?

[kidsatacrux]

fstab

ttp://www.tldp.org/LDP/gs/node6.html#SECTION00641000000000000000


By the way,

the hard drive was never given a FAT format of any kind. It was NTFS.

[kidsatacrux]

file:/mnt/hde1

is not listed as having anything in it,

it still won't mount

[kidsatacrux]

file:/mnt/hde1

is not listed as having anything in it,

it still won't mount

Most especially NOT " /etc/fstab "

There's nothing listed in that.

Could someone please help me?

[kidsatacrux]

To whom it may concern,

As a side note to this apparent inability for

Debian,

&/or Koppix 3.4-5-17-04 w/ both the 2.4.* kernels & 2.6.6,

&/or KDE,


to find any files on this main hard drive, (maybe it really broke?)

it seems the 2.4 kernel recognizes other CD-R & RW, but not that SATA hard drive,

yet the 2.6 kernel recognizes my SATA hard drive, but still won't mount,

nor recoginze the Samsung DVD ROM /CD-R / CDRW

worse that Kb3 CD burner won't burn files



This is disappointing and I hope these issues are solved someday when a humongous massive HARDWARE recognition ENGINE program with a thorough database on old hardware configurations is designed someday.

If Knoppix isn't the best at doing that, I don't know what operating system could match it.

[AdriMagnon]

Hi,

Pop in the Windows XP CD and boot off it. At some point it should say "Found Windows XP instalation on drive X: What do you want to do?" One of those options is Repair so choose that. Or, just boot to boot to DOS with a disk and type "Fixmbr" You can get the rescue disks at bootdisk.com, I believe.
All this assumes that you DID NOT erase all the Windows XP info. If all you did was corrupt the drive header than you can rescue the whole disk. Also, a repair SHOULD not erase any info -- just lay down a new Windows XP kernel and such. You will need to re-update all the Windows XP software after this.
In the future, it would be a good idea to partition your drives (I dual boot between WIindows 2000/Knoopix 3.3) so that after there is a section for apps and a section for files. Like, on your 80GB drive, if it only has Windows XP, partition 12-15GB (NTFS) for Windows XP and then the rest (65-68 NTFS) for storage like downloaded files or documents. Also, if using Linux, and you want to transfer files between Linux/XP then make sure that you cut the rest of the drive in half and use FAT32 and NTFS. Write from Linux to the FAT32 section.
If you did earse the Windows XP stuff then you need to do a complete reinstall.
However, as a last resort try in Linux go to console and type:
su
fdisk /dev/hde *Or whatever your drive is*
t * This changes the partition's type*
1 *chooses partition 1*
m * HPFS/NTFS file system*
w *writes table and exits*

This method doesn't, I believe, erase anything other than the beginning and only tells the OS that the disk formnat is now NTFS.

After this, you should be able to mount the drive.

Good luck,

AdriMagnon

P.S. Get the SystemRescueDisk here: http://www.sysresccd.org/
and try QTParted. Also, tak ea look at this thread, especially at the bottom when they mention test disk: http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=12132