I cannot see Windows hard drive on Knoppix desktop

[ockham23]

@maxIT: Modern notebooks are equipped with SATA interfaces to speed up data transfer. I doubt that Knoppix 3.7 supports this new technology. Maybe you want to give it try with Knoppix 5.0.1.

[Jacky]

The strange thing is, Crimpshrine's VAIO FX300 is probably too old for the hard disk to be SATA. Secondly, from what I read of the specs, the hard disk must be fairly small, something like 10-15GB. Therefore, I think the gpart data you posted for sda1 must also be for the Lacie. Crimpshrine, I think the notebook hard disk must be hd and not sd. Therefore we shoud, as Harry suggested, go hunting for hda1 and hda5 (that is assuming your notebook hard disk had 2 partitions.)

To simplify, let's do this step by step. I suggest the following (we may end up using gpart, but that's later):

1. disconnect the Lacie, and all other peripherals especially USB ones.
2. attempt to boot the VAIO with Knoppix (use version 5.0.1)
3. if you succeed, do you see any hda1 or other icons on the desktop?
4. if yes, try to mount them from the root shell (not the konsole, but the root shell which you can find by clicking on the penguin). Mount with the following command:
mount /dev/hda1 /media/hda1 -o ro
5. if this works, then you have got it!

6. if you succeed in booting up but don't see any hda icons, then it means the hard disk didn't get detected. In subsequent postings, we'll try various boot cheatcodes to get the disk detected.

7. If you don't succeed in booting, or you are succeeding intermittently, this could be something physically wrong with the disk, so report back to us what error messages or what the behaviour of the notebook was e.g. where did it hang, and then we'll take it from there.

Also, could you tell us what your notebook harddisk size is, and how it was partitioned, and what is in which partition? May help us in the hunt. Also, what version of knoppix you were using.

Regards.

[Crimpshrine]

Jacky:

It's very late at night right now, so I will try your suggestion (disconnect Lacie external hard drive) and rebooting this weekend as I may end up having trouble rebooting again in the middle of night and I don't want to fight with computer all night. I will post the results as soon as I try what you mentioned.

As far as Knoppix disk I am using is concerned, I am using 5.0.1. I purchased it online recently.

I do not know why my hard drive does not get detected. I am not sure if it is anything to do with the VAIO setup. Anyway, my VAIO hard disk was partitioned in two drives; C: was about 10 GB and D: was about 20GB if I remembered it correctly. I remember that the C: drive was not that large, but I still had more than 10 GB of free space in D: drive. C: was the primary drive where Windows booted from, and D: drive was where I used to store most of my files I did not use too often. When I come to think about it, I should have bought an external drive a lot earlier and should have stored what I had in D: in that external drive. I really regret that now.

I am not sure if my case is something similar issue to maxIT's laptop issue. It sounds similar, but I don't know. I am just hoping that I can find the hard disk and recover the files I had in the computer...I never imagined this recovery process would be this difficult.

[Venoms]

Hi.

I'll guess that this shouldn't be here but, if you boot on xp-cd and go to the recovery consol.
Write: FIXMBR (enter)
Write: FIXBOOT (enter)

Now it should be in order, if not try one xp forum instead, this error can't be fixed by knoppix...