File recovery from NTFS drive using Knoppix 5.0.1

[Daddymac117]

Hey guys,

Im having problems attempting to recover files from a friend's laptop's NTFS drive, using Knoppix 5.0.1, and either burn them off or transfer them to my SuSE 10.0 box.

Every attempt that i've made so far hasn't helped much, and still being a Linux amateur (used SuSE 9.3, 10.0, and 10.1 off and on since Nov '05) isnt helping my situation any. This is my first time trying a Live CD, even though ive played around with a DSL distro a while back, this is the first time ive tried to accomplish something using a Live CD.

My situation is this:
Transfer approx 8.5gb of my friend's files from the laptop's drive to DVDs or to my own hdd, so i can reformat and reinstall XP on the laptop.

Plan #1: Failed.
I found out the hard way that I can't burn any of the files off, because the optical drive is in use by the Knoppix CD, so there went Plan #1...

Plan #2: Failed.
I connected the laptop to my home network, and attempted to send files from the laptop to my SuSE desktop using GAIM, but GAIM still has odd file transfer issues, and would crash before anything was sent.

Plan #3: Somewhat successful.
I was able to enable Samba, and transfer files between the laptop and the SuSE desktop. The only problem was i wasnt able to share directories and all files within the directories. I tried sharing a directory, and for some reason only the directories would share, leaving behind all of the files that were within those directories. If i transferred an entire folder to the SuSE box, all i could see were the directories...no files at all. Yet if i compressed that directory from the laptop, and shared it as a compressed archive, it would share perfectly fine, and I could just uncompress everything once it was moved to this desktop.

The drawback to that is it only allows me to share files within the /home directory, and nothing else. So anything that i wanted to share had to be copied into the /home directory, and then be compressed. During the copying of most folders above 200mb in size, the laptop will lag extremely bad, and eventually crash, forcing me to restart the laptop to do anything. If the copying went fine, i would sometimes recieve random errors from Ark saying that some files didnt exist, and abort the archive creation, yet i can view the files fine within Konqueror...

This method is way too slow, and seems like it won't even allow me to move all of the files that i need to move off. Ive moved off about 400mb out of 8.5gb in 2 days so far...

Plan #4: Failed.
After being frustrated at having to copy individual directories into /home just to share, i figured that it would be much easier to just share the entire /media/hda1 drive, so i can access everything from here...but again, it wont allow me to share anything that doesnt reside within the /home directory....foiled again.

Plan #5: Failed.
At this point, i attempted to see if i could use the Remote Desktop Connection, or SSH to connect directly into the laptop, and copy files that way. Not only am I relatively new to Linux and Samba, im completely knew to networking in general. This just led to more frustration, because I had no idea of what i was doing, or how i was going to connect to the laptop using these methods.

---

After doing all of this, im starting to run out of ideas on how im going to recover these files from the drive using Knoppix...

My question is whether you guys had any other ideas for me to try, or do you already have a tutorial up somewhere around here for this stuff that I havent stumbled upon yet? Have I been going about this the wrong way or something? Im completely stumped

Thanks in advance!!

[Harry Kuhman]

There is a recovery faq in the wiki, found by following the documentation link near the top of this page. But I find the fastest way to transfer files between two systems is to run an FTP server on the receiving end and use an FTP client (such as Konquror) on the Knoppix sending side to quickly transfer the files there. Works much faster for me than any Windows networking approach.

[Daddymac117]

There is a recovery faq in the wiki, found by following the documentation link near the top of this page. But I find the fastest way to transfer files between two systems is to run an FTP server on the receiving end and use an FTP client (such as Konquror) on the Knoppix sending side to quickly transfer the files there. Works much faster for me than any Windows networking approach.

Thanks alot for the reply!

I followed the instructions to set up the FTP server in Knoppix, and was able to FTP in using Konqueror on my desktop, and the files transferred flawlessly!

Gotta love learning new stuff lol.

Thanks again!