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Thread: Knoppix for Data Recovery? Hard Drive Failure!

  1. #1
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    Knoppix for Data Recovery? Hard Drive Failure!

    I was searching eBay (only half serious) for data recovery solutions and came upon some selling a CD with something called Knoppix on it and saying that it could be used for data recovery on crashed hard drives. After a little searching, I see that I can download and burn to a CD myself. But I am not sure if Knoppix is something that will be useful to my plight or not.....

    I have a Sony Vaio laptop that recently crashed and when I turn it on, it now says OPERATING SYSTEM NOT FOUND. I desperately need to get some of the files off of my computer but would RATHER not spend the $400 to $500 (or more) to send to data recovery places if I can help it!

    So can I use Knoppix to boot up and get access to the files on my hard drive? What is the best method for doing this? I tried a search and the FAQs, but didn't find much. Any help would be appreciated! Thanks!

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    Re: Knoppix for Data Recovery?

    Quote Originally Posted by OpenIntro
    So can I use Knoppix to boot up and get access to the files on my hard drive? What is the best method for doing this? I tried a search and the FAQs, but didn't find much. Any help would be appreciated! Thanks!
    Follow the Get Knoppix link at the top of this page. Your best bet is to use the Bittorrent link. If you don't do that and use the mirrors instead, be very sure to download the md5 file also and to check the md5 sum.

    If you have never burnt an ISO file before, do NOT assume that you know how to burn the disk. Follow the documentation link at the top of this page and read the downloading faq. Important things to understand: Burn it as an image (exact way to do this depends on your burning software), Do not just drag the ISO into the file area, do not extract any files from the ISO, do not use any option in your burning software to make it bootable. Burn the CDR at a slow speed like 4x and use a 700 meg CDRW the first time if you have one.

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    Re: Knoppix for Data Recovery?

    Quote Originally Posted by OpenIntro
    I was searching eBay ....
    One additional thought:
    I'm pretty sure that just like email and ecommerce, ebay get the e in it's name from electronic and the bay from bay of thieves.

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    haha....thanks for the reply....and I totally concur with you regarding eBay :P

    I have downloaded the entire file from one of the mirrors....I will make sure I get the md5 file as well. I have burned iso files before, but will still follow the steps in the documentation so as to no screw it up I am using Nero Burning Rom to burn the CD. One problem...the iso file seems to be 715Mb....how can I get this on a 700Mb CD?

    Getting it on the disk is the first step....but my main question was, can I use Knoppix to retrieve the files off of my hard drive? And once I get it up and running, how can I go about this?

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    Quote Originally Posted by OpenIntro
    I am using Nero Burning Rom to burn the CD. One problem...the iso file seems to be 715Mb....how can I get this on a 700Mb CD?
    It's not as big as you think it is, you're looking at it wrong. Do confirm the file with the md5 sum, it's very important when using the mirrors. If the md5 is right then the file absolutely is smaller than 700 meg and will fit on the CD.

    You didn't say which version of Nero, burning differes for different version. Version 5 has an option something like "load from Image" under the file menu. Normal version 6 requires you to use the regular open under the file menu. Nero for Dummies interfaces have an option hidden somewhere not obvious on the top page to burn an image.

    How you back up files depends on your hardware. Maybe you can transfer files across a network. Maybe you can store them to a USB flash device or another USB drive. Maybe you can save them to another FAT partition or even to a FAT partition on an extra drive you add to the system. In some cases you can write the data to CD's or DVD's. It's all been discussed many times before, you might want to read through the forums or search for the information (as a guess, the keyword "recover" might be a good search starting point).

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    Thanks again for the reply Harry.....

    I actually need to redownload Nero, so I will make sure I have the latest version. I think I can get that part figured out.

    As for WHERE to recover the files to, I can probably figure that one out. Is it possible to transfer them across a wireless lan since the laptop is equipped with a wireless lan card (built in)? I think the hard drive is failing, so I need to get them OFF the drive rather than recover them to somewhere else on the drive. I have an external hard drive, but it is Firewire, and I doubt I would be able to use my Firewire adapter?

    I searched for recover, but as you probably know, it came up with quite a few results :P And none that I found had a definitive thread subject like mine here, so I would help myself and future searchers!

    Again though, I am curious as to how the recovery works. When I get Knoppix up, will I just have a Windows Explorer style interface where I can drag and drop files?

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    Quote Originally Posted by OpenIntro
    As for WHERE to recover the files to, I can probably figure that one out. Is it possible to transfer them across a wireless lan since the laptop is equipped with a wireless lan card (built in)? I think the hard drive is failing, so I need to get them OFF the drive rather than recover them to somewhere else on the drive. I have an external hard drive, but it is Firewire, and I doubt I would be able to use my Firewire adapter?
    It's good to be working with Knoppix now rather than after you have to deal with it in a panic. As to the wireless link, maybe but don't get your hopes up. Some people have managed to get wireless networking working with Knoppix, but the support is not great, the vendors usually will not release information and only provide Windows drivers. I've tried a couple of different cards but so far can't get my wireless networking working (not that it's been a high priority). If I did ever need to recover something from my notebook I would just jack it into an ethernet port, but if you get networking going now then you have it when and if you need it. All in all I expect you'll find the firewire support is much better that the wireless support.

    Quote Originally Posted by OpenIntro
    I searched for recover, but as you probably know, it came up with quite a few results :P And none that I found had a definitive thread subject like mine here, so I would help myself and future searchers!
    Actually, I didn't do the search myself, it was only a guess at a keyword to start with. But this has been talked about over and over again. You might want to look at the documentation and see if there is anything in the wiki about it. If not you might even want to take on the project of adding that topic to the wiki. And obviously there are lots more keywords and keyword combinations that can be tried to find discussions of this, or just read through the subject lines (yea, some subject lines are pretty useless, it may be most efficent to jut skip past them).

    Quote Originally Posted by OpenIntro
    Again though, I am curious as to how the recovery works. When I get Knoppix up, will I just have a Windows Explorer style interface where I can drag and drop files?
    Knoppix doesn't do anything particularly special for "recovery". It just happens that many times when windows (particularly XP) can't boot, Knoppix can boot just fine and the hard drive is still readable. Obviously if the partition is damaged or completely deleted then Knoppix will not see the files, but there are still some Live CD recovery tools that may help save people even in these cases. Helix is one that you might want to look at if you have an interest in this area after you get Knoppix working (Please include mention of this in any Wiki article that you write).

    And yes, you will be able to drag and drop files, but don't ever drop them on an NTFS type partition.

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    Harry,

    I've downloaded, burned and booted to Knoppix, and I am now in....it actually almost brings me to tears to see ANYTHING on my screen right now, as I have seen nothing but "Operating System Not Found" for 3 months, and not sure what to do about it! The penguin is bringing me great joy!

    Now here is where I am a bit lost....I am perusing around Knoppix and have found the file manager (which I assume is where I need to be to see my files) but am not sure exactly WHERE or HOW to look for the files. I see a ROOT FOLDER, but that just looks like the files off of the CD. I have been browsing the forums via the search but have yet to find a definitive HOW TO on how to recover files. Any chance you can help or at least point me in the right direction?

    Also, I have 2 drives (C and D) that were on this computer, and I BELIEVE they were FAT, but am not 100% sure....is there any way for me to tell?

    *edit*

    Ok, I have clicked on DEVICES in the File Manager and see:

    CD-ROM (cdrom) [/mnt/auto/cdrom] Mounted CD-Rom
    CD-ROM (scd0) [/cdrom] Mounted CD-Rom
    Floppy Unmounted Floppy
    Hard Disc [/mnt/auto] Mounted Hard Disc Partition
    Hard Disc (cloop) [/KNOPPIX] Mounted Hard Disc Partition
    Hard Disc (root) [/] Mounted Hard Disc Partition
    Hard Disc (sda) [/mnt/sda] Unmounted Hard Disc Partition
    Hard Disc (sys) [/sys] Unmounted Hard Disc Partition

  9. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by OpenIntro
    Harry,

    I've downloaded, burned and booted to Knoppix, and I am now in....it actually almost brings me to tears to see ANYTHING on my screen right now, as I have seen nothing but "Operating System Not Found" for 3 months, and not sure what to do about it! The penguin is bringing me great joy!

    Now here is where I am a bit lost....I am perusing around Knoppix and have found the file manager (which I assume is where I need to be to see my files) but am not sure exactly WHERE or HOW to look for the files. I see a ROOT FOLDER, but that just looks like the files off of the CD. I have been browsing the forums via the search but have yet to find a definitive HOW TO on how to recover files. Any chance you can help or at least point me in the right direction?

    Also, I have 2 drives (C and D) that were on this computer, and I BELIEVE they were FAT, but am not 100% sure....is there any way for me to tell?
    Congratulations.

    There is a lot more information in these forums than I can rewrite here, you may have to dig a little to find all of your answers. I'll try to give a few quick replies to get you started.

    As to partition types, what OS did you have? If it was XP and you don't know what partiion type you have/(had) then it almost certainly NTFS. If it was Win98 (or 95 or me) then you certainly have FAT partitions since those systems didn't support NTFS.

    Usually you will find a desktop icon for each partition, double clicking it opens the partition (in read only mode). If these are missing it might be a sign that the partitions have been destroyed (what happened in the first place to cause your problems?) Knoppix can read the partitions if they are still there, but really doesn't do anything magic to recover information from partitions that have been destroyed. Well, it does, I'll get to that below....

    But wait! There is at least one other Live CD that does do magic to recover files from partitions that have been destroyed. It's called Helix. Curiously, there was another thread similar to yours today and I gave a link to it there. Here's a link to that thread, I'll leave it to you to find the link to helix inside it: http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=18038 Of course, you're stating to mess with powerful magic here, so I would urge you to go carefully and slowly. Better to be sure that you know where you stand than rush into things.

    As I said there is an awful lot of information in these forums and in the wiki that I can't duplicate for you tonight. Read through stuff and learn. There is a good book that someone (sorry, I forget who) wrote and published on-line as a beginners guide to Knoppix (not sure of the exact title). You should be able to find it with a little searching for the word book (there is also a hard cover book on Knoppix called Knoppix Hacks. This is not the same thing. I have not seen it but it is said to be good. I would suggest that you start with the on-line book, as I understand it that is more of a beginners resource.

    If you can't find the lost partitions anywhere on your desktop (likely hda1 and hdb1) then it might help to know what happened to cause this and to know the current status of the partition table. This will help determine the next step. It might be to try to use Helix. Or actually (I just remembered) Knoppix does have a utility that can try to recover lost partitions from a hard drive that might do the job. It's called gpart and you might want to read more about it in the man pages (open a "shell" and type man gpart at a prompt. But again I would urge you to move slowly here, don't rush to actually run gpart until you better understand what caused the problem, what the problem is, and what you really want to do about it. Caution here is important to prevent data loss.

  10. #10
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    Never mind about the other thread with the link to Helix in it; I got my two threads mixed up. This is the one wth the Helix link, it's a few posts above this one.

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