using knoppix 6.4 and I cant find my files

[nicole2003]

my windows 7 laptop wont boot and I want to get my files off
I got knoppix 6.4 but couldnt find my files anywhere. Where would they be? The only thing on the desktop is the knoppix folder. Do I need an older version of knoppix? Please help

Nicole

[Forester]

Hi Nicole and welcome to the Knoppix forums.

Do I need an older version of knoppix?

Older than 2003 ? No. Older versions of Knoppix had lots of disk icons on the desktop. The current version of Knoppix doesn't.

Whack your Knoppix CD into your naughty laptop's CD drive and boot up Knoppix. Stick a USB memory stick into a USB port.

In the bottom left corner of the desktop is a representation of a bird right where the Start button used to be on old versions of Windows (circa 2000). To the right of that is a icon that represents a squat chest of draws. Click on this icon to open an app that implements a file manager paradigm. You should see two panes. That smaller left hand pane has all the icons you miss from dear old Knoppix 5. Click on these at random until icons representing the root directory of your naughty Windows 7 drive appear in the larger right hand pane.

Click on the squat draws icon again to open a second file manager paradigm and click on disk icons at random until the root directory of your back up USB drive appears. Drag and drop your files off just as if your were under Windows 7.

If no disk icon corresponds to the root directory of your Windows 7 disk then it is quite possible that your Windows 7 laptop won't boot because the Windows 7 disk is as a dodo.

[pantheros]

Well about this problem i have something to ask. When i click on sda1 from the knoppix directory the window disappeared. I can't acces my hdd. It seems that is mounted but i can't access it.

[Forester]

Hi pantheros and welcome to the Knoppix forums.

So you tried clicking the button and it didn't work. I remember Windows being like that. At least with Linux you can brush the windows aside (they really should be called curtains) and find out what is really going on.

I'm going to ask you to open a console terminal and type in a few commands so we can find out what is wrong. I'd like you to stick a USB pendrive into a spare USB port so we have a comparison that we know works. I'm assuming you are using a Knoppix 6.4.4 LiveCD.

To open the terminal window, click on the black window shape next to the squat chest of draws next to the bird symbol down in the left hand corner.

Type in:

cat /proc/partitions

Precisely what is displayed depends on what you have in your PC/laptop. There should be a entry named cloop0 - that's the Knoppix CD. There are probably entries sda and sdb. These should be your harddrive and the USB pendrive respectively.

I would expect there to be sdb1 - that would be the file system on the pendrive. I would expect there to be sda1 and sda2 - those would be your Windows partition and a hidden 'rescue' partition but which is which ?

Have a look in the file /etc/fstab - you can use leafpad if you want but from the command line:

cat /etc/fstab

will do. The interesting lines in this file have the form:

partition mount-point type options 0 0

Look for the entries with type ntfs and vfat. These identify your Windows and pendrive file systems respectively.

Next we'll try to unmount and remount these by hand. Don't worry about errors on the unmount - it is the errors you get on the remount that are of interest. For the USB pendrive you need to type in something like:

umount /dev/sdb1
mount /dev/sdb1
ls -l /media/sdb1

depending on precisely what is in your /etc/fstab file. The last line will list the files in the root directory of your USB pendrive. You can go back to the PCMan file manager a click on the sdb1 icon and see the same files iconically.

Now try the same for the Windows drive. I expect the mount command will fail. Try again with:

sudo mount /dev/sda2

or whatever. I don't think it will make any difference. Post the error messages you get. What we do next depends on what error messages you get. I have a fair idea of what they will be but I don't like guessing with other people's data.