Using a USB HD to recover data from XP home edition - query

[Laurent]

Hi,

I've been looking around the forums for a few hours looking for a solution to my problem. I think i've found some sort of solution, but would like to get some clarifications before I try anything and to also make sure i'm fully understanding what i need to do.

here's what i posted in a thread in General Forum which seems to relate to my problem ( i dont know for sure tho):
Quick rundown of my situation.
I have a PC at home which is one of those OEM ones, ie when we bought it we were never given an install or repair CD. The PC runs Windows XP Home edition (the OEM version from what i learnt recently), 516mb of ram and an athlon XP 1700 processor (not a 100% sure about that).
Fast forward 3 years, and the PC started bugging badly. To the point where it totally crapped out and i cant get back into XP to retrieve data before reseting it.
So a friend linked me to KNOPPIX. Grabbed the most recent version this weekend, tested it and yes i can boot frmo the CD and see all the files stlil on the computer.
However I cant burn data from KNOPPIX as i've only got one CD drive and not enough ram to do the boot option where KNOPPIX transfers to the ram (the knoppix ram command i think?).
Yesterday my partner managed to borrow a portable USB Hardrive from her work. now the thing is the USB hd works fine with a Mac (my other computer) but i have no way of knowing if it works on a PC or Linux (got a feeling it's not gonna work on a PC).

I've seen a help page that gives a quick rundown of how to transfer data from the computer booted in KNOPPIX to a USB HD.
however last night when i tried to do it (with very little understanding of where to look as i'm totally new to Linux) i couldnt seem to find the USB HD anywhere at all.
My question is thus: if the USB HD works fine with a mac does it need to be formatted in some way before i can use it with KNOPPIX? And if so will the formatting render it unable to work with a Mac? (my other computer is a mac, which i could use to store data while i redo the PC, but the USB HD isnt ours and i dont think they'd want it formatted to something else as they only use macs).
Any advice/instruction on how to format it so i can grab the files and whether or not this would affect using the USB HD to transfer files back onto a Mac would be hugely appreciated.

Also as a side query. Before the PC crapped out, we had a sort of network between the mac and pc where we could transfer data from one to the other using shared folders. For some reason when i boot in KNOPPIX it doesnt seem to pick up any of the internet or network settings that XP had. I cant go online, cant see the Windows Shared folder which we used to transfer files between comps.
but from looking around there seems to be a way to do that tho from my understanding. Ie. make it possible for KNOPPIX to see my mac, and let my mac mount a shared folder or something like that so i can grab data from the PC and salvage it on the mac.
However again if someone could give me some advice/instruction on how to do that i would be very grateful.

One thing worth knowing is that i've no experience using Linux or KNOPPIX (save my usage of it last night for a few hours trying to figure out how to find the USB hd) so if you could keep that in mind when giving me advice/instructions thank you.

laurent

[OErjan]

hmm, the hdd might have to be formatted, but either way it should atleast be found under linux, most USB disks work just fine.
what is the output of

sudo fdisk -l

l=L not i or 1.
what does

lsusb

say?
type these in a console and let me know if your disk is found.

[Laurent]

hi there,

ok i've opened the konsole. the output of the first command you gave me seems to me to be a description of the HD on the PC, how much space it has, etc... dunno how clear this is, but im typing from my mac which is on the other side of the room... not from the PC.

the second command, lsusb, says
Bus 002 Device 002 : ID 059f:0641 LaCie, Ltd

and another 3 lines similar to this. but LaCie is the name of the USB HD (said it when i put it on my mac yesterday).

would you have any idea how i can mount this onto the desktop to see if i can write to it?

[OErjan]

i have a lacie disk myself. it is found emediatly on boot. it might be that you have to format it with a filesystem that all the operating systems can read/write, only one i know of, fat32, wrks on both mac, linux and win.
the comand fdisk -l should have listed the size, filesystem, partitions... on that portable disk aswell (if it was plugged in and found by the OS).

hm, if you disconect it and then reconect, then type dmesg, do you see andy entries like this when it stopp scrolling?

usb 1-4.4: new full speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3
scsi0 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
usb-storage: device found at 3
usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
usbcore: registered new driver ub
Vendor: GENERIC Model: USB FLASH DISK Rev: 0302
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 00
SCSI device sda: 32000 512-byte hdwr sectors (16 MB)
sda: Write Protect is off
sda: Mode Sense: 00 00 00 00
sda: assuming drive cache: write through
SCSI device sda: 32000 512-byte hdwr sectors (16 MB)
sda: Write Protect is off
sda: Mode Sense: 00 00 00 00
sda: assuming drive cache: write through
sda: sda1
Attached scsi removable disk sda at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
Attached scsi generic sg0 at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0, type 0
usb-storage: device scan complete

i get that as output when I plug in an old usb pen to my computer, you should get something like it in knoppix.

[lhm19951]

I did this just yesterday.

Boot with your USB disk plugged in. The disk should be larger than the disk you're copying from. You will lose all of the existing data on your USB disk, so make sure it's backed up.

When you eventually get to KDE, it should show up as sda1.

Your hard drive should show up on the screen as hda1.

COPYING
Open a shell window.

Su to root. Type this command:

su

Then run this command at a console prompt:

dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/dev/sda1 &

(Put the & at the end. It runs your job in the background.)

This does a bit-by-bit copy from your hard drive to the USB drive. Depending on the size of the hard drive, this command will take up to 24 hours. Be patient.

You track progress using this command:

kill -USR1 pid

where pid is the process i.d. of the dd command. You get this by first typing this command:

ps

You will see the output of ps with the process i.d. as a (most likely) four digit number at the left.

When dd finishes, it prints a little message.

USING THE DISK
Plug your USB disk after the dd command finishes into a Windows machine's USB port. You will see all of your files in the usual Windows file tree. EVERYTHING is copied, including deleted files, etc., so they can be recovered if needed using a recovery tool.

[Laurent]

hi guys

thanks for the answers. managed to sort it all out in the end by buying my own portable HD (got a great deal).
thanks a lot for your help tho and i'll be sure to recommend KNOPPIX to friends in similar situations

Lo