Basic help recovering files off bad hard drive

[Ansky926]

I'm a novice Knoppix user and I'm trying to recover files off a Windows XP hard drive where the OS has failed. I had been successful in recovering files before, but it has taken me a while to try several ways to get it right and it has been a while since I've done this.

I'm trying to recover a user's personal folder from the hard drive to an external USB hard drive. I boot up to Knoppix and I can see three hard drives. One is the partitioned recovery HD and then the HD with the files I'm trying to recover. The other HD is the external USB drive.

I have gone into the properties of each drive and given them read/write permissions. If I try to change the permissions on the folders I'm trying to copy from and to I get the error "Could not change permissions for /mnt/uba1/recover". If I copy the folder I'm trying to move, in this case iTunes, to the external USB I get errors like "could not make folder mnt/uba1/itunes".

The files I'm looking to recover are on hda2 and I'm trying to move to a folder I created on the USB drive UBA1. From the hda2 drive I'm trying to recover this directory: /Documents and Settings/Owner/My Documents/My Music/iTunes. I'm trying to move them to the UBA1 to a folder named "recover".

Am I missing permission settings, is there a command that I can run that makes this easier?

[Ansky926]

I should also add that I have unchecked the "Read Only" for the drive I'm trying to move the files to. The drive is mounted.

[krishna.murphy]

What version of Knoppix are you using? Version 6 mounts drives writable in most cases, while earlier versions did not. I believe in version 5 you had to click the icon to mount it, then right-click and set it writable.

Cheers!
Krishna

[Forester]

What version of Knoppix are you using?

My thought exactly. I think Ansky926 has an old Knoppix 5 CD.

I think all he wants to do is drag 'n' drop a folder (aka directory) from his hard drive to his USB drive.

That would be with this pcmanfm that folks are always talking about ? Under Knoppix 6 sure but under Knoppix 5 I think you'd use Konqueror. How hard can that be ? Command line man myself so I really don't know.

The devices have to be mounted first. Can you do that from pcmanfm ? (doubt it). It is easy enough ... open a terminal and type:

mount /media/sda2    # Ansky926's Windoze partition
mount /media/sdb1    # Ansky926's USB partition

My guess is something very similar would work under Knoppix 5 but the Windows partition probably does get mounted under /mnt/hda2. I've never known USB sticks get mounted anywhere other than /media but I never used Knoppix 5 all that much.

Knoppix 5 (and earlier) had a nice set of icons representing disk partitions on the desktop and you could (didn't have to) mount partitions by clicking on them. That's gone from Knoppix 6. I guess that UFD partitions could be mounted the same way.

Knoppix 5 (and earlier) could not mount NTFS partitions r/w so there is no point trying to make the mount read/write. It might let you do this but it has no real effect. So you can copy, but not move, files off a Windoze Ex drive. I don't quite understand why to 'recover' files from a duff disk you would move rather than copy them but perhaps it involves fewer mouse clicks. Save the planet and all that.

I can't see why the mount of the USB stick would be by default read/only but Ansky926 writes that he has unchecked the "read-only" (which I guess is an indication that he's using a wimpy UI and not a CLI).

So he writes he can't copy. The copy command under Linux is cp. Ansky926 doesn't say he using something else so I gave it a go:

@Microknoppix:~$ cp -R tmp mnt/uba1/itunes
cp: cannot create directory `mnt/uba1/itunes': No such file or directory

Note the error message says directory but Ansky926 writes that the error message he gets says folder. I am not aware of Knoppix having a special en-windows locale so I guess he's not using cp. My guess is he is using some drap-n-drop. In which case how did Ansky926 manage to leave off the leading /?

My real question is how does one help such people ? No wonder questions at this level are usually ignored by regular forum readers.

Cheers

[Werner P. Schulz]

From the hda2 drive I'm trying to recover this directory: /Documents and Settings/Owner/My Documents/My Music/iTunes. I'm trying to move them to the UBA1 to a folder named "recover".

Am I missing permission settings, is there a command that I can run that makes this easier?

... I hope you are not using some very old Knoppix-Version.

Open PCManFM twice. In the first instance of PCManFM select whatever you want to copy to the usb-drive. In the socond instance of PCManFM select the usb-drive - here you must be root! (PCManFM-menu/ Tools/ Open current folder as root).


Greetings Werner * http://www.wp-schulz.de/knoppix/summary.html
Own Rescue-CD with Knoppix (Knoppix V6.4.4 remaster)

[krishna.murphy]

PCManFM-menu/ Tools/ Open current folder as root

Why is it imperative to "take root"? That seems an odd way for things to be set up.

Cheers!
Krishna

[Werner P. Schulz]

Why is it imperative to "take root"? That seems an odd way for things to be set up.

... you are right! It also works for simple user knoppix - just tested it for my own,

[Werner P. Schulz]

... oh! I have make a mistake - it doesn't work for user "knoppix"; I tested at the wrong location

On extern usb-drive I can not work as user knoppix. Either i work in the second instance of PCManFM as root or root creates a storage folder and "chown" it for user knoppix.

I think, the first way is easier to use for knoppix novice.

Greetings Werner * http://www.wp-schulz.de/knoppix/summary.html
Own Rescue-CD with Knoppix (Knoppix V6.4.4 remaster)

[Forester]

Why is it imperative to "take root"? That seems an odd way for things to be set up.

My thought exactly.

So I stuck in a USB stick and Knoppix added the following line to /etc/fstab:

/dev/sdc1 /media/sdc1 vfat noauto,users,exec,umask=000,shortname=winnt,uid=knoppix,gid=knoppix 0 0

So I typed in (look Mum, no sudo):

mount /media/sdc1
fgrep sdc1 /etc/fstab

and got:

/dev/sdc1 /media/sdc1 vfat rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,uid=1000,gid=1000,fmask=0000,dmask=0000,allow_utime=0022,codepage=cp850,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=winnt,errors-remount-ro 0 0

Taking the letters rw as a good sign, I tried (without sudo):

touch /media/sdc1/werner
rm /media/sdc1/werner

and got no error. So I did:

pcmanfm &
pcmanfm &

and dragged and dropped arbitrary file from my the file manager open at my home directory to the file manager open on the usb top-level directory and again got no error. I deleted the file again using the file manger and again no error. I opened nothing as a root window.

What have I got wrong ? Installing to USB ? Using the DVD edition ? Running the KDE desktop instead of the latest toy ? Or did I just cheat by using the command line ?

Every release the GUI seems to change and people are all lost, confused or frustrated because the hack they used to use no longer works. Here's me typing in the same kind of thing I did 30 years ago (before there were PCs and stuff) and, "well, knock me down with a feather", it still works.

Cheers,

[Werner P. Schulz]

What have I got wrong ? Installing to USB ? Using the DVD edition ? Running the KDE desktop instead of the latest toy ? Or did I just cheat by using the command line ?

... I found the difference - my usb-drive is ext3-formatted.

I attached an external usb-drive and found in /etc/fstab

# Added by KNOPPIX
/dev/sdd2 /media/sdd2 ext3 noauto,users,exec 0 0

In this case user "knoppix" get error message "Permission denied" if he wants to create files or folders on this partition.

Greetings Werner * http://www.wp-schulz.de/knoppix/summary.html
Own Rescue-CD with Knoppix (Knoppix V6.4.4 remaster)