Can't see data on Windows FAT32 partition

Hi all,

I'm using Knoppix 3.9 as a live CD to recover data from a botched Win98 machine (OS boots but then explorer.exe crashes at a critical point, preventing further boot progress) by moving it from the local FAT32 hdd (one partition) to a Windows file share on another machine using SMB. I have run into a few problems, so I would really appreciate it if someone more experienced could give me a hand.

Knoppix boots but then I am told 96MB RAM is insufficient for KDE & it asks me whether I want to create a swap file on the drive. Now, maybe I'm comitting one of my trademark blunders but when I press <Enter> with Ok highlighted, I get sent back to the same dialog without warnings/errors. If I press Ok again, same thing happens.. repeat until inf. If I press <Enter> on Cancel it boots into a different windowing system. Why is it that it cannot create a swap file on a FAT32 drive?

Once I am in this other windowing system, i notice that there is a /mnt/hda1 but when I open it, it's empty. I know the drive hasn't been wiped because I can still boot Windows from it (kinda). Do I need to explictly mount it? If so, then what is hda1? Could someone help?

Thanks,

Alex

Quote:

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Originally Posted by alex2004

Cancel it boots into a different windowing system. Why is it that it cannot create a swap file on a FAT32 drive?

Once I am in this other windowing system, i notice that there is a /mnt/hda1 but when I open it, it's empty. I know the drive hasn't been wiped because I can still boot Windows from it (kinda). Do I need to explictly mount it? If so, then what is hda1? Could someone help?

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It's not clear to me why you cannot create a swap file. I did when I tried booting on a 64 meg system. It's slow but it worked. Do you have enough free space on the hard disk for the swap file? The only thing I can think of is the disk may not have the free space. Since it's Win98 and FAT at least you should be able to boot DOS or a Windows backup disk and get into it that way and free up some space if needed.

I'm not sure what the "other windowing system" is. In the normal KDE GUI you should indeed click on the hda1 icon and have it open your first hard drive partition. Can't say whay should happen with a different GUI. There are still several things you can do, including just dealing with a command line interface, but I would try to resolve the swap file issue and get a kde gui up (understand that iit will be slow with a memory hit).

As it turns out, I *am* a certifiable moran. I should have pressed <Space> to select the partition on which to create the swap file. Now it all works fine. I am still curious why I couldn't see contents of hda1 in the other window manager.

Cheers,

Alex

Yes you need to explicitly mount the hda1 (C: drive) partition. When you do it on the GUI desktop, there is some behind the scenes scripting magic which makes it work. Sometimes that scripting gets broken & when you click the icon & open up the hda1, it appears to be missing, but thats OK since it wasn't mounted.

To get around the RAM thing, boot knoppix with:
knoppix desktop=icewm

Then when knoppix boots up to icewm, click the small monitor icon & get an xterm.
In that xterm command window we need to mount the hda1

Code:

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sudo mount -t vfat -o ro,users /dev/hda1 /mnt/hda1

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Once you enter that command it should succeed but it will not give any status of it being successful. To check if all the file are there:
sudo ls /mnt/hda1

Next you need to open up the GUI file manager.
sudo konqueror

Once that comes up, in the location bar, I use the following to authenticate to a Windows domain & then access a windows networking share.
In the location bar: smb:/domain\[email protected]
If you do not need to authenticate to a domain, the form is:
smb:/hostname
or
smb:/IP.address.of.machine

This should allow you to get to windows shares. Once you see the windows network shares where you want to save the data, then hit the keys CTRL-T to open a tnew tabbed window. Then in that location bar type: /mnt/hda1/
Now you should see the hda1 (C: drive) contents. Just like in windows explorer, select the file & folders you want to copy, CTRL-C or right-click & copy them. Use the mouse & move over to the other tab with the smb connection, then CTRL-V or right-click paste to initiate the transfer.

I have done all these steps just right now so they should work.
Please let use know how it went.
James

As I mentioned earlier, KDE now works and I was able to back up the data. Knoppix saves the day! I haven't tried mounting manually under the other windowing system.

Alex