Recovering NTFS partition (Newbie)

[Davidsa]

--Post the results of ' fdisk -l ' as root, so we can tell you exactly what to do. We're just guessing at what your HD looks like here until we can see this for ourselves...

OK here goes:-

Disk /dev/hdd: 123.5 GB, 123522416640 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 15017 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdd1 * 1 15016 120615988+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/hda: 30.0 GB, 30020272128 bytes
16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 58168 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 = 516096 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 58168 29316640+ c W95 FAT32 (LBA)


Also:-

fdisk -l /dev/hdd1

Disk /dev/hdd1: 123.5 GB, 123510772224 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 15015 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdd1p1 ? 116388 126889 84344761 69 Unknown
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/hdd1p2 ? 105915 222310 934940732+ 73 Unknown
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/hdd1p3 ? 1 1 0 74 Unknown
Partition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/hdd1p4 1 213826 1717556736 0 Empty
Partition 4 does not end on cylinder boundary.

Partition table entries are not in disk order

The bigger disk is currently set up as slave on ide 2, but until it crashed it was the master on ide 1. It has Win XP pro on it, with the 'recovery console' installed. Indeed, clicking the hdd1 icon on the Knoppix desktop shows a FAT partition only which I imagine is this. console.

I have enough room on the hda1 disk for all the data I need to recover from the hdd1 disk (which is currently running Win2K)

When I have recovered what I need I will reformat the bigger disk, put it back as primary master and reinstall WinXP, and put in a partition for an intial toe dip into Linux (haven't yet decided on distro).

I am trying to get my head around the way partitions etc work in Linux cf Windows/DOS. I'm also discovering that things like 'mkdir' aren't quite the same! javascript:emoticon('')

I hope the above is enough to go on - many thanks in advance for suggestions.

David

Thanks - but when I try this I get an error message something like "Unable to open /dev/hda "

What am I missing?

David

Try it as root.

OK, thanks. I now seem to have the HDs (both of them).mounted. But now the drive with the corrupted NTFS partition gives an 'Access denied" message although I CAN access and manipulate the other one with the FAT32 partition.

How can I give myself permisson to access my own hard disk?

Fdisk listed more partitions on the NTFS disk than I thought were there.

I can't seem to navigate between partitiions although I can move between disks.

The icon on the desktop for the NTFS hard disk has a green flash on its bottom RH corner, but not the other one. What does this mean?

Thanks again for any pointers - and apologies for my current state of ignorance.

David