One PC, 2 drives, copying/moving date from one to the other

[Torriatte]

Hi Folks,

Very new to Knoppix but VERY impresed. Had a key users's HD "croak"; at least according to Windows...

So I stuck this HD into another working PC that had a HD in it and room for a second and booted up Knoppix.

I can see both drives fine.

The original HD (to this working PC) shows as Hard Disk Partition (hda1)
The problem HD shows as Hard Disk Partition (hdb1)

[scottknl]

There are a couple of ways you can do things.

Easy way: Mount both drives and use cp or mv to copy or move the data from one to the other. cp makes a copy of the data. mv moves the data from one spot to another.

mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/hda1
mount /dev/hdb1 /mnt/hdb1

cp /mnt/hda1/* /mnt/hdb1/
or
mv /mnt/hda1/* /mnt/hdb1/
Be sure to unmount the drives when youre done.
cd /
umount /dev/hda1
umount /dev/hdb1
A common problem in unmounting drives is that you have some console window pointing at the drive. The system will not let you unmount the drive until no command prompt is pointing to it.


Another way is to create an image of the data and then store the image on the other drive.
mount /dev/hdb1 /mnt/hdb1
dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/mnt/hdb1/image_of_hda1.img bs=64000
To read the data again you would mount the drive, and then mount the image
mount /dev/hdb1 /mnt/hdb1
cd /mnt/hdb1
mkdir hdamount
mount -o loop /mnt/hdb1/image_of_hda1.img hdamount
Now when you look at the directory hdamount, you will see the image of the drive you copied.
Once you're finished with your data, remember to unmount the drives.
First the image file:
cd /mnt/hdb1
umount /mnt/hdb1/image_of_hda1.img
Then the drive:
cd /
umount /dev/hdb1

Hope this helps

[Torriatte]

Wow - that had to be the dumbest post to this list (by me NOT you !).

I had started that post and was trying some other stuff before buggnig folks and spaced this. I guess it went ahead and posted it for me (?). Can it do that if a certain amount of time has passed ?

Thanks for your reply anyway, that is awesome

What you mention doing requirs me to not be in the GUI correct ? How do I do that since this boots up in the GUI ?

I tried doing it from Terminal and that was a no go. I don't know a whole heck of a lot about Linux, obviously

I was HOPING to do it from the GUI. I can open both drives, but if I "hover" over them before actually opening either one, you get the drive info and the both say Writable: NO so does that prevent me from "dragging" the one folder I want on hdb1 to hda1 ?

I try and do that and it just "sits" there...

So confused; sorry !

Chuck

[OErjan]

you can be in gui just fine.
open a console and type the scomands.
you get a console by clicking that icon looking like a screen that has a shell glued to the front:

sudo mount -t vfat /dev/hda1 /mnt/hda1
sudo mount -t vfat /dev/hdb1 /mnt/hdb1

this is if you have fat32 filesystem on the drives.
if you have NTFS you must read some on captive NTFS and use that for the disk you are writing to.
a safer option (that will wipe the new disk) is to format it to fat32, but that makes it hard to get linux writing files larger than 2Gb and NECESARY that NO file is larger than 4Gb-1B (one byte less than 4G), that is limit of the filesystem.
now to copy iu would use

cp -a /mnt/hda1/* /mnt/hdb1/

the -a makes it an ARCHIVE copy, that is, permisions, filestructure, directories... are as close a "clone" as can be made short of dd.

[Harry Kuhman]

Hi Folks,

Very new to Knoppix but VERY impresed. Had a key users's HD "croak"; at least according to Windows...

So I stuck this HD into another working PC that had a HD in it and room for a second and booted up Knoppix.

I can see both drives fine.

The original HD (to this working PC) shows as Hard Disk Partition (hda1)
The problem HD shows as Hard Disk Partition (hdb1)

Yiou know, I don't see a question anywhere in the post.

I also am not sure why Knoppix was even used, after the "bad" CD was moved to a second Windows computer, could that computer read the other drive? Did you try? If there was an error, what was it?

What sizes are the disks, and, if you are actually trying to recover something, how big is what you want to recover? And since you seem to have things working, are you actually asking the group anything, or just happy to report that Knoppix could see the drive and let you at the file?

[Torriatte]

Harry,

I had posted an explanation to the misfire earlier today

My problems is I had a key PC say the HD was bad.
So I stuck that drive in another PC that could hold a second drive and boot with Knoppix OK (this PC with the bad drive would not boot into the GUI. It is a Celeron and all the others are Pentium. Not sure if that would have caused that ? Plus it could only handle on drive and I needed to get data OFF of the bad drive and onto something else).

When I try doing the Copy (click on the folder I want on HDB1 and "drag" it to HDA1 or click on it and select Copy and the click on HDA1 and selet Paster) in the GUI a box pops up tellig the # of files, etc and its says the process is "Stalled".

Any idea what is going on ?

Thanks !

Chuck

[Harry Kuhman]

Any idea what is going on ?

I'm still missing a lot of what's going on and going wrong.

I understand that you moved the drive into a second computer (not sure that was needed, but it's there now). OK, you couldn't boot that drive's windows (since it's in a computer is wasn't installed for), but you should be able to boot the original copy of windows for that computer (and you did install the drive you moved as a second drive, rather than replacing the drive that was in that computer. What happens if you just boot windows? Can you see the second drive at all?

Even if you could only boot the computer into DOS (maybe even if you used a DOS floppy), you should still be able to see both drives and see and move files.

But this is a Knoppix forum, so lets assume that we want to find a way to use Knoppix to recover whatever you want to recover. Just what is that? What do you need to recover, how many files and what total size? Do you haveplenty of space on the other hard drive?

What format is each partition on each drive? Are you aware that Knoppix can write to a FAT partition, but should never be used to write to a NTFS partition? Do you know that you have to remount a partition as read/write before you can write to it, and did you do that?

[Torriatte]

Harry,

I am SO sorry I am confusing this. If that initial post had not gotten posted until I was done filling it out

This "bad: drive is 20GB and the "good" one is 80GB. You cannot boot the "bad" drive.

I installed it into this second PC because I have about 1.6GB of stuff on the bad drive that I need to recover. I tried my usual Windows/DOS utilities with not luck. So another mailing list I subscribe mentioned Knoppix and I downloaded that and THAT CD is in the CD drive on this computer and I am booting Knoppix up and working (or trying to) within it.

So can I stay on the Knoppix forum ?

Thanks !

Chuck

[Harry Kuhman]

So can I stay on the Knoppix forum ?

Thanks !

Chuck

You can certainly stay on the forum, but since I still don't know the partition types or if the destination partition has been opened read/write, I think there's not much more I can do to help in that area.

I recently took part in a discussion with another user who was trying to recover files. He had a CD writer on a computer, and I fould I could create a bootable CD and then write up to 650 megs of additional files to it, that could then be recovered on another system later. (the CD was no longer bootable after this, but that's a very minor issue, it had the needed data, which was the point). If making a few of these CDs sounds of interest to you read this thread: http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtop...=14781&start=0

We know very little about your situation, other than you have at least two computers. Rather than moving hard drives I would have tried to network them and transfer the files between them. (I'm a Linux lightweight and when I have files I'm in fear of loseing is not the time I want to fight with things like Samba, so I would likely just transfer then with FTP. I'm just saying that's what I would do, not that's what you are doing should not work, and I don't know if you have the hardware to network your computers.

[Torriatte]

Thanks for lettting me stay Harry

I'm sorry I'm not being clear enough on this. The other PC would not let me boot up into Windows OR Knoppix. So I could do nothing like FTP, Samba, etc.
That is why I took the drive out and stuck it into another PC. At first I was just interested in seeing what Knoppix could do. We had gotten quote THOUSANDS of $'s to recover the HD and that did not go over well

I read that link thanks but still do not understand why I cannot do what I need under Knoppix via the GUI.

I have the bad drive (20GB and a good drive (80GB) in this other PC.

If I hover over the drives on the Desktop in the Knoppix GUI I see:

(Good Drive) Hard Disk Partition hda5 (this dricve changed from the earlier hda1 that was having issues - when it rains it poors...)

Type: Desktop Config
Size: 390B
Modified: 11/17/04 03.52 pm
Owner: knoppix - knoppox
Permissions: -rw-r--r--
Name: Hard Disk Partition [hda5]
Type: Device
Device: /dev/hda5
File System: auto
Mount Point: /mnt/hda5
Writable: No

(Problem Drive) Hard Disk Partition hdb1

Type: Desktop Config
Size: 390B
Modified: 11/17/04 03.52 pm
Owner: knoppix - knoppox
Permissions: -rw-r--r--
Name: Hard Disk Partition [hdb1]
Type: Device
Device: /dev/hdb1
File System: auto
Mount Point: /mnt/hdb1
Writable: No

I can access either drive. On hdb1 (bad) I can go to the data directory, pick a Word or Excel file and open it in OpenOffice.

But when I try to copy and paste from an hdb1 window to an hda1 window it opens:

Copy File(s) Progess window
Source: file:/mnt/hdb1/Data Lee Supply
Destination: file/mnt/hda5
0%
156 folder 1327 files
Stalled

Keep this window open after transfer is complete

Open File (greyed out) Open Destination Cancel

And it just sits there.

That help ?

Thanks,

Chuck