Dell hard drive issues?

[Mikefive]

I've heard before that Dell does some funky things with drives. And my situation seems like this may be the case.

My goal here is to use Knoppix to recover data from partitions where Windows is gummed up such that it won't boot. I am a complete newbie to Knoppix or any other Linux flavor for that matter.

I downloaded Knoppix (the newbie version IIRC) and burnt the CD without issue. I tried it in a troublesome machine and had some issues, so I decided to try it in a perfectly good working machine. I have a Dell GX-260 with an IDE hard drive and 512MB RAM. For this discussion, that is the PC I'll be referring to.

Here's the weirdness:
I successfully boot from the Knoppix CD and I get icons on my desktop for Hard Disk [hda1] and Hard Disk [hda2] as well as others. (Dell PCs come with a diagnostic partition and a second partition for the OS.) If I choose hda1, it works perfectly. I can see files and it works great. I also tried inserting my USB drive post-boot and it recognized it. Wonderful!

Still, my goal is to get data from the 2nd partition. However, clicking on hda2 yields the following error:

Could not mount device.
The reported error was:
Unexpected sectors per cluster value (127).
Failed to startup volume: Invalid argument
Failed to mount '/dev/hda2': Invalid argument.
The device '/dev/hda2' doesn't have a valid NTFS.
Maybe you selected the wrong device? Or the whole disk instead of a
partition (e.g. /dev/hda, not /dev/hda1)? Or the other way around?

So apparently it sees the drive and both partitions, but despite the fact that the 2nd partition is perfectly fine, it doesn't like it. Is it just that it doesn't like NTFS? I think the first partition is FAT32 or FAT16.

I poked around in the forum looking for a solution. I found someone suggest to another user that I open a terminal window and type some commands. Here's what happened:

fdisk -l /dev/hda
Cannot open /dev/hda
fdisk -s /dev/hda1

fdisk -s /dev/hda2
39021885

I'm now stuck. Is there a way I can overcome this 'sectors per cluster' issue? I wonder why the command line stuff doesn't work? (I find that troublesome.) Is the solution to Dell problems like this published somewhere? Can someone link me to it?

Thanks in advance for your help.

[Harry Kuhman]

I downloaded Knoppix (the newbie version IIRC) ....

What the heck goes this mean? Since when does Knoppix have a "newbie version"?

As to your problem, Knoppix can read from valid NTFS partitions just fine, although it should not be used to write to them. It sounds like something with your NTFS partition is corrupt, not at all uncommon with Windows.

Obviously there are some ways that data can be corrupt so bad that it can't be recovered (say it was all overwritten by garbage, for example). And this does happen; I have two hard drives that I can't recover the files from, even with the advice I'm about to give you.

But the good news is that often what windows has mucked up is not the partition itself, but just the entry in the partition table that points to the partition. If this is what has happened in your case there is a simple and easy fix. The command gpart can analyze the disk and try to recreate the partition table. type man gpart at a prompt for more details. You can run it in a test mode, see for yourself if it looks like it's going to fix anything, and if it looks promising then allow gpart to write to the drive. Good luck.

[Mikefive]

I tried booting to the Knoppix CD on another machine, a brand spanking new Dell 745 with SATA hard drive. It behaves very similarly. I get the exact same error when I try to click on the sda2 drive.

[Harry Kuhman]

That is interesting, but I'm not sure what it means. I have seen some support issues for SATA hardware, but your original system didn't seem to use SATA.

It could well be that Dell is playing some non-standard games with your disk. Many manufacturers do, they eat up 20% or more of valuable hard drive space for a "recovery copy" of the OS and other support tools rather than including a 5 cent disc with the computer. If this is what is causing the errors in your case then I don't know what to tell you.

[cbagger01]

I tried booting to the Knoppix CD on another machine, a brand spanking new Dell 745 with SATA hard drive. It behaves very similarly. I get the exact same error when I try to click on the sda2 drive.

You cannot view the paritition table without using superuser or "root" authority.

So:

sudo fdisk -l /dev/hda

should work.

As for KNOPPIX and Dells, my advice is to download a copy of the knoppix 5.01 livecd. I have seen problems with the linux kernel used in knoppix 5.1.1 and certain Dell motherboards.

Good Luck.

[Mikefive]

OK, I read through the gpart manual stuff. Some of it is over my head. But the first example says...

To scan the first IDE hard disk under Linux using default settings
gpart /dev/hda

So I tried that on the brand new Dell 745 PC (with SATA drive), which was already booted up to Knoppix, here's what I did and the result:

gpart /dev/sda

*** Fatal error: open(/dev/sda): Permission denied.

So I booted Knoppix on my GX-260 and got basically the same result

gpart /dev/hda

*** Fatal error: open(/dev/hda): Permission denied.

What did I miss?

[Mikefive]

OK, that helped...

I did this command on my GX-260... sudo gpart /dev/hda

...and got some appropriate information on my partitions.

[Mikefive]

Really.....



long....



download.....................

[cbagger01]

Really.....



long....



download.....................

FYI, the "Unexpected sectors per cluster value" message indicates that the ntfs-3g driver does not see a valid NTFS boot sector at the beginning of disk partition /dev/hda2

I can think of a couple of reasons why this might be true.

1) The partition table is incorrect, so the first sector of /dev/hda2 is pointing to a different spot on your hard drive instead of the true boot sector.
2) The boot sector is corrupted and the driver is unhappy.
3) There is some problem with the version of the NTFS-3G driver that comes with KNOPPIX as it relates to your specific NTFS installation. In the past, I have used an older version of KNOPPIX on a Dell Optiplex GX260 that is running Windows XP so I am pretty sure there is a way to get this thing to work.

Maybe you can try to manually mount the drive by using the old (READ ONLY, no writing allowed) NTFS driver.

Boot KNOPPIX, but don't click on the HDA2 icon (in other words, don't try to mount this partition yet).
Open a terminal window and type:

sudo su

If the /mnt/hda2 directory does not exist, type:

mkdir /mnt/hda2

Then type:

mount -t ntfs /dev/hda2 /mnt/hda2

konqueror &

and see if you can use your konqueror (File manager - Super User mode) window to see the files.

They should be located at

/mnt/hda2

in the directory tree.

Good Luck.

[Mikefive]

Apologies to you guys for beating your heads against the wall for me.

I didn't realize that the GX-260 that I was working with had drive (or more accurately partition) encryption software installed on it. I should've known that. On the 745 machine, I had attempted to install drive encryption software on it, but it didn't install properly and said the drive was not encrypted at all. So I figured it was a good test machine to play with.

I now remember where I heard about the Dell drive issues. I was trying to use BartPE (http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/) and had to include a plugin for Dell machines, otherwise they wouldn't see the drive or OS partition, I can't remember which. Anyhow, with that in the back of my head and the struggles I encountered (especially the same issue on different models), I assumed it was an issue with Dell.

I'm still a tiny bit perplexed about how the unencrypted drive generated the same issue as the encrypted one. Although who knows what that software does when you try to install it. Lesson learned I guess.

I blew away and reloaded the OS partition on the GX-260 and the Knoppix 5.1.1 software works fine now.

Thanks bunches for your help! Especially you, cbagger01!