Unmountable Boot Drive

[Portcrap]

Hi All,

Firstly Knoppix is fantastic, really impressed with it so far.

I was orginally forced into booting with Knoppix since xp wasn't loading from my Hard drive. Safe mode wouldn't load either. I just got a message saying unmountable boot drive. Did a bit of research and it seems I have bad sectors on the drive. I doubt it is a physical error since it is reading and writing perfectly from Knoppix.

My question really is: How can I repair my hard drive from Knoppix. I ran the xp recovery console using the xp cd with the usual commands chkdsk /p, chkdsk /r fixboot etc. Nothing has worked. I really need to get the pc up and running again. Can anyone help on this?

Cheers

[Harry Kuhman]

I can not give you a way to repair a Windows partition with Knoppix. I suggest instead that you use Knoppix, which you say can read the partition just fine, to back up the files that you want from the windows system. Then completely reformat and reinstall windows. Yea, it's a pain. Windows users get used to it though. Otherwise the quite being windows users. Any "fix" is likely just to corrupt the partition and cause you to experience a complete partition failure later.

There are many ways to backup your data using Knoppix. I suggest installing a Windows FTP server on another windows box and transfer the desired files by FTP across a network, using Knoquror as an FTP client.

[johnrw]

Well I would make sure
1. Your drive's data cable is securely plugged into the connectors, drive and motherboard.
2. Your cable is good, by trying a different cable.

Next I would look for some confirmation of impending drive failure.
Knoppix has the smartctl and smartd programs of the smartmontools package.
If your drive is starting to fail... it should show up in there.

http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/#sampleoutput

But the disk that comes with most boxed hard drives have some diagnostics on them as well.
Did you throw away the disk that came with your drive? If you know the brand... you can download an iso, or a zipfile if you are lucky...
of that brands utilities disk from the website.

Good Luck.

[Portcrap]

Cheers Lads. Harry took your advice and did a system / factory reset and that did the trick. Unfortunatly I have to set up my pc again. Cest la Vie. John I downloaded the seagate drive check utility so will give that a bash.
Have done a hard drive check and there were bad clusters on the HD. Suppose to take the positive I have got my first taste of Linux with Knoppix and going to user iot more often.

Thanks again for all the help.