New to Linux

[nad]

Two years! Congratulations.

Now, as to that hidden filesystem. Keep in mind that partition and filesystem type information is kept in the boot sector of the drive. NTFS filesystems store information in an additional sector as well.

If this is one of the old hidden FAT type partitions, you should be okay. I do not know enough about the operating system response to a change of NTFS partition type to make a judgement if this is the case.

Either way, important data should always be backed up before any low level operation such as this. Even if you can not read the filesystem, you can still back up the data with any program that will make a bit copy. The standard diagnostic tool here is the command: dd . This utility will make direct disk writes from an input file to an output file. The command: dd if=/dev/hdc of=/dev/hdd bs=32768 ; will overwrite the target location with the entire contents of the source. Other tools are partimage for for _ghosting_ a partition and the parted utility itself for cloning a partition.

[Gthang]

OK, good thing I didn't commit the change then.

When the problematic partition first presented itself, Windows said that it was inaccessible because it was a third-party software that partitioned it. And Windows did not even list the partition in Explorer.

In my mind, by unhiding it using QTParted, it may actually unhide it in explorer, as it is an NTFS partition.

Any other thoughts?

[nad]

Copy it to another drive on a diagnostic system and experiment on it from there.

[Gthang]

RE: Cloning (backing up) the bad partition

OK, I have two external high-capacity HDD with more that 4.40 GB free disk space, with the 4.40GB being the total amount of data on the bad partition.

The external disks are labeled as /UNIONFS/dev/sda1 and /UNIONFS/dev/sdb1.

If I wanted to back up my partition from /UNIONFS/dev/hda2 (the bad partition that's "hidden") and store the backup in a new folder called "Recovered Files", what would I type in the Root Shell?

[Gthang]

OK, finally found out how to copy.

I searched the forums (duh, should have done that first...), and found that hard drives are set to read-only by default. I learned how to change this and am now copying the files (even created a new folder!).

Thanks for your help everyone! Linux is great!

[Gthang]

Uh oh, it seems one of the files could not be copied, and the system froze. I will have to figure it out tomorrow, as it is getting late.

I will talk to you guys tomorrow, see what we can do.

Good Night!

[nad]

Perhaps I should have been more succinct when I suggested that you copy _it_. What I meant for you to copy was the partition (clone) not the filesystem tree. In order to do this you use a low level utility with the filesystems _unmounted_.

There should be no harm done other than a little stress on the drives. Please post back with whatever results you have achieved so far and realize that if a particular file _froze_ your process you can always kill it from another terminal. Also note that an image copy from a cloning utility or direct read/write will not have this issue as it does not care what order or pattern those ones and zeros are in.

[Gthang]

Yeah i knew what you meant by the copy. I just thought that if my destination drive was by default read-only, then by changing this setting, I should be able to recover the files.

So which low-level utility should I use to clone the partition?

[nad]

This depends on the type of filesystem. I believe that parted will call the necessary ntfs utilities if required. Read the man page.

Direct instructions with the dd command will perform the actions listed on the command line regardless of the filesystem type or your intentions. Be careful.

[Gthang]

Why is it that when I try to access an external hard disk, the status bar reads "Stalled"?

Once in a while, refreshing the Konqueror window shows the files, but other times, I can't see them at all.

How do I fix this?