new user - need help

ok i think this is the sanctuary for windows users i believe. well i think i ran into a registry error. my laptop goes into a continuous cycle of reboot. just as the welcome screen is about to load it reboots it self. i called tech support at toshiba they advised me the only thing that I can do is to re-format and start from scratch. easier said than done, i need my data =]

so after bitching and moaning i tried seeking some advice from people, and they said download knoppix. also buy an external hard drive and save your files.

ok so i downloaded knoppix, bought an external harddrive. but things arent that simple.

i have no idea how to "see" my external hard drive on the knoppix desktop. I did a little search and it said something about file name w/ sda or along those lines. on my desktop i see no file name. there are three icons one for floppy ( i dont have a floppy, hard disk partition (my laptop harddrive), and cd rom.

how can i "see" my external hard drive?

how can i write to it?

thanks very much in advance. i appreciate the help and in dire need of it.

Boot without the drive plugged in, then when fully booted plug it in and you should see sda1

click that.

Now right-click the icon for it and go to actions -> change read/write mode.

double post

Quote:

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Originally Posted by firebyrd10

Boot without the drive plugged in, then when fully booted plug it in and you should see sda1

click that.

Now right-click the icon for it and go to actions -> change read/write mode.

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same thing without the drive plugged in. the drive is a seagate 120gb. laptop is a toshiba satellite.

Is the drive partitioned and formatted?
What are the last line of dmesg when you've plugged it in?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Markus

Is the drive partitioned and formatted?
What are the last line of dmesg when you've plugged it in?

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the drive is out of the box from seagate. i havent formatted / partitioned it. and i didnt receive a message when i plugged it in

What are the last lines of the command dmesg ?
You should get something along the lines of:
usb 1-1: new full speed USB device using address 2
ub: sizeof ub_scsi_cmd 60 ub_dev 924
uba: device 2 capacity nsec 50 bsize 512
uba: was not changed
uba: uba1
usbcore: registered new driver ub

My drive is attached now as uba and the partition is found at /dev/uba1. If your's attached as sda, post the output of sudo fdisk -l /dev/sda

i get no out put when i type sudo fdisk -l /dev/sda

when i type dmesg. it gives me a really long output but the last line doesnt match. the last line is

eth0: link down

Does he have to install the imm module with modconf? Like for a zip drive. I didn't get anything showing for sda until I installed imm module.

Can't say. Which modules are loaded? The output of lsmod ?
Also have a look at dmesg just after you plug the drive in.

Oh, then that drive needs to be partitoned to use.

Try sudo qtparted with it plugged in.


*ugg, my spelling is really going downhill.*

thanks everyone for the help posted so far. here is the update. i went ahead and pulled my laptop hard drive out. i tried to buy a converter from laptop harddrive to desktop. instead the guy sold me this

http://www.comx.co.za/usb_drives/images/Mobile_disk.jpg

he said i could just move the files. it worked for some files and not for others. the files that transferred were the ones in my shared directory. the ones that didnt transfer were within my documents folder.

im trying this program get data back to recover those files. hopefully this nightmare will be over soon.

i really like this mobile disk. god forbid anything like this to happen again i will keep it around. it makes my laptop hard drive like an external harddrive. it sits in the case and data transfers via usb 2.0

Quote:

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Originally Posted by firebyrd10

Oh, then that dirve needs to be partitoned to use.

Try sudo qtparted with it plugged in.

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Having never used an unpartitioned usbdisk, doesn't it say anything in dmesg when you plug it in?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jatt

thanks everyone for the help posted so far. here is the update. i went ahead and pulled my laptop hard drive out. i tried to buy a converter from laptop harddrive to desktop. instead the guy sold me this he said i could just move the files. it worked for some files and not for others. the files that transferred were the ones in my shared directory. the ones that didnt transfer were within my documents folder.

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Heh, they often try to sell you something different from what you're asking.
What are you using to transfer, windows? Then it's a permission thing and you might still want to try knoppix unless you're copying to an NTFS disk.

the system im trying to copy to is ntfs. i dl'd this other program called get data back. that helped me retrieve my entire hard drive. i think im good now. im just going to format my entire drive and start from scratch.

Really, never seen one?

I see them all time here. :?

Atleast I did, my recently bought drive came partitioned.