Need help using KNOPPIX to rescue my PC - HP want me to RMA

[j.drake]

OK, HP Pavilion 735n, still under warranty, two 80 GB HDs, original HD has Win XP (HP recovery partition on hda1, remainder on hda2 in NTFS), second 80 GB HD has partitions for Mandrake installation (hdb1, 5,6,7), with about 65 gig (hdb in an NTFS partition. Followed the advice in installing Mandrake to install GRUB to the secondary HD. I did so, and it worked well, and I'm cruising along fat, dumb and happy, when all of a sudden, my BIOS went stupid on me, and wouldn't recognize my HDs (no, I'm not blaming Knoppix or Mandrake - I wasn't using Knoppix, and both WinXP and Mandrake were working fine - my wife, OTOH, is laying the blame squarely at my feet for screwing around with Linux in the first place, so Tux's honor, rightly or wrongly, is on the line). Anyway, no settings work, both HDs pass a diagnostic utility test (a bootable disk left over from second HD installation), Knoppix runs just as good as ever, with both HDs accessible, etc (BIOS still recognizes the CD drives).

Called HP tech support - tech had me unplug and re-plug IDE cables and power cables in all possible permutations, including without second HD - no effect. So, he wants me to RMA the box back to him (after removing the second HD), and I'm betting they're going to swap out units with me, and I'm going to lose all my data and get stuck reinstalling everything, plus doing without the box for a couple of weeks.

I went to HP website (on another computer) to get support and drivers for my machine, and they have a BIOS update download available. So, I figure I'll copy it to a bootable floppy, flash the BIOS, and be on my way. Wrong - the BIOS has to be installed from Windows, and can't be installed from DOS, but I can't get into Windows. So I e-mailed HP tech support, gave them a case number, and proposed that they e-mail me a bootable BIOS flash. HP says no, they can't e-mail BIOS flashes, and since the problem is in my HD (Huh???), I need to RMA it anyway. I just e-mailed back, asking if the problem is with the HD, and I'm going to lose data anyway, why not re-image?

BTW, I saw the posts about Knoppix ruining Dell BIOSes, and the fix involving pushing the power button while the cord's unplugged. I did that, but I didn't hold the power button very long. I'll try it again.

Here's what I need from you folks, if you will be kind enough to help me:

1. I think my BIOS flashing idea makes sense, but apparently HP thinks I'm wrong. If you agree with HP, please tell me, and I'll chalk it up to bad hardware, take my lumps, and quit obsessing about it.

2. If you think that there's some merit in my idea, do any of you know a website where I can get a flash ROM image of the BIOS for my machine?

3. If I have to RMA the machine, could someone please step me through the procedure for using Knoppix off the CD to copy data and program files from hda to hdb, and also how to burn CD-Rs or DVD+Rs of the hda data, so that I won't lose it? I'm afraid I have not learned enough about running Knoppix off the CD to copy data off of drives and delete data off of drives, and insofar as I'm having to pose these questions off of other people's borrowed PCs, and mine is stll laying dormant while my wife taps her foot and fumes, I don't have a lot of time to get up to speed the hard way.

4. If you have other ideas or suggestions, please let me know.

Thank you, Klaus, you may be my only hope.

[j.drake]

I found part of my answer, I think, in the "Computer First Aid Using Knoppix" article, listed in the documents section. Hopefully I can use this to at least get a decent backup. Unfortunately, my big partition on the second drive is NTFS, so I can't copy files to it. So, current plan is to burn to CD, if I can get that figured out, or else to try to repartition hdb in order to suck a big part of hdb8 (NTFS) into hda7 (FAT32).

Still, I would appreciate any wisdom anyone can offer on fixing BIOS.

[dave52355]

You could use Acronis True Image to make a image of your XP partition and save to your Linux partition on 2nd drive. At least then you would be able to restore the image to another drive when HP returns the system. True Image will make a bootable cd that will allow you to boot from cd no Windows required after that.

Have/can you try another hard drive to see if Bios detects it?

Good Luck, but it sounds like a hardware controller failure and your best bet would be waranty repair.

[j.drake]

Thanks Dave. I did some backup last night, thanks entirely to Knoppix and Cedrick Shock's First Aid article, which I referenced above. Using these tools, I was at least able to burn "My Documents", some TurboTax and Quicken data, and some smaller files. Of course, what I would really like to do is to copy them onto hdb as you suggest, especially since some of my files are video files that are too large to fit on a CD-RW. Apparently, K3B doesn't support DVD+R/RW, and I could not find any application on Knoppix which does (might have something to do with Dr. Knopper's assessment that everyone cannot afford a DVD burner). As my ISP can only be accessed via Windows, I'm kind of stuck with the programs that are already available on the Knoppix CD. As far as your question about another HD, BIOS blew off both of my HDs simultaneously, and both were set up to be bootable, so it's not an issue of one HD.

BUT, I STILL DESPERATELY NEED HELP! Using Qtparted, I re-partitioned the large NTFS-formatted hdb8 into two smaller FAT32 partitions (hdb8 and 9) of approximately 30 GB each. I'll need these for my video files that are too large to burn. But I still couldn't use the partitions once I created them. I presume it's because they still need to be formatted as FAT32.

HOW DO YOU FORMAT A PARTITION IN KNOPPIX?? I couldn't find it anywhere in Help. Here's the error I get when I tried to copy files from hda2 over to hdb8:

could not mount hdb8

mount wrong fs type, bad option, bad superlock on /dev/hdb8
or too many mounted disk systems.

I assume this is due to the need to format the drive. I already checked the box to make it writable and checked all of the boxes in the properties.

Thanks for any and all assistance. I"M ALMOST THERE!

[j.drake]

Did some checking around. It appears that you format the partition with the mkfs command. The only examples of syntax I could find were for ext2. So, generalizing off of that, I infer that the proper syntax for me formatting, say, hdb9 in fat32, would be something like the following:

mkfs.fat32 /dev/hdb9

And, I assume that I have to mount it first. Since I assume that I won't have the luxury of clicking it on the KDE desktop to mount it, would the syntax be as follows?

mount /dev/hdb9 (or is it mount -t /dev/hdb9 ?)

Sorry to ask such basic questions, but I don't find bash to be particularly intuitive, and with as many troubles as I'm having now, I cannot afford to screw up a HD too! Before my BIOS or IDE controller had a stroke, I would just cheat and do all my filesystem formatting in Windows. Is there a simple way to do this in KDE, or am I stuck with bash?

Somebody please confirm and check my work. And, from the properties on the KDE desktop, I assume that I'll tic the checkbox to make it writable before copying files from hda2. Anything else I'm missing? Thanks, JD

[rickenbacherus]

Apparently, K3B doesn't support DVD+R/RW, and I could not find any application on Knoppix which does (might have something to do with Dr. Knopper's assessment that everyone cannot afford a DVD burner).

/usr/share/doc/dvd+rw-tools

[j.drake]

Wow, it continually amazes me how much meat is on one Knoppix CD-ROM, if you only know where and how to look for it. It's like giving someone a one-foot cube of beef jerky - it will feed them for days if they could just figure out how to get it in their mouths. By comparison, Windows is more like getting the same amount of nutrition in a warehouse full of rice cakes - they're much easier to chew and digest, but why bother?

So, is this pretty easy to use?

Also, great guru of gurus, did I get the bash commands right for formatting the partitions?

Thanks,
JD

[rickenbacherus]

You almost had it right.

mkdosfs -F 32 /dev/hdb9

Check out man mkdosfs for a better understanding. Oh and no you don't need to mount the drive becasue you don't actually mount a drive but the filesystem on the drive.

[j.drake]

I'm still having problems, and it's getting d*mn frustrating, because I've got an 80 gig HD that's going to be replaced or erased when I RMA my box, and I have another perfectly good 80 gig HD bolted right under it with nothing on it but Mandrake and some empty partitions, I've got one of the most capable, powerful and comprehensive distributions of a great OS (Knoppix - I cannot boot HD because BIOS isn't recognizng them or IDE controller is bad, therefore cannot run Windows or Mandrake) up and running, a DVD writer, and about 20 or so empty DVD disks, and I still can't manage to save my data (other than the smaller files I put on CDs with K3B). This is irritating the fire out of me, because this should be easy, and I cannot make it work!

I've tried big partitions, small partitions, fat32 partitions, and even ext3 partitions, I've formatted the file systems in those partitions in all of those configurations, and no matter what I do, I still get the following error:

could not mount hdb8

mount wrong fs type, bad option, bad superlock on /dev/hdb8
or too many mounted disk systems.

Oddly enough, I can go to a shell prompt, and type some command like sudo mount /dev/hdb8, and the shell takes the command and returns another prompt, without any error message (there may be some other flags or arguments I used, but I don't have my notes here), yet when I go back to the desktop to move the files, I get the same error as above. Oddly enough, I have absolutely no problem mounting, reading, or doing stuff with my Windows files in the NTFS partitioned hda2, which is where my data is. I even tried using mcopy to copy within the shell, but it returns some kind of error, I think about an unrecognized folder. I just don't get it why it is so difficult to mount this other partition and copy to it. Remember, I'm still new to Linux, so it may be something stupid and obvious, so please don't be afraid to insult my intelligence with any suggestion.

Along those same lines, Rickenbacherus, I read the documentation for /usr/share/doc/dvd+rw-tools several times, and much as I hate to admit it, it's just flat over my head. I don't understand it, and I don't have enough time to research it and learn it before I have to RMA the box. Maybe if I were an experienced Linux user and script writer, fine, but I'm not going to be able to make it work until someone writes a step-by-step guide for newbies, with "type this" and "do that", and the like. I just don't have the skills or experience yet. At any rate, I'd really prefer to copy to the second HD anyway.

[rickenbacherus]

Sorry I'm kina short on time right now but to simply copy your hard drive check out MOndo. It will copy only the data on your drive and it will compress it for you and let you burn to disc.
sudo mondoarchive