Knoppix without a windows install?

[apoc]

Hey guys, I have a crashed NTFS hard drive which I am trying to recover about 100gb of data from and Im having a little trouble. I am using Knoppix 3.8.1 and I cannot get Knoppix to recognize any drives if I unplug the drive which has Windows installed on it. The drives are like this: one has the windows partition on it, and then a blank Fat32 partition, that drive is inthe master position. Then, I have the drive which I need to recover the files from plugged into the slave spot. When I boot knoppix in this configuration, everything is recognized just fine. I have a 200gb FAT32 drive that I am trying to recover the files to and if I swap it with the bad drive, knoppix still boots fine. The problem comes when I unplug the windows drive and only plug in the bad drive and the 200gb one I want to backup to.

Problem #2 is I do have a spare IDE channel that I could plug another drive into so that all 3 drives could be connected at once but a CD-RW drive is plugged into one of the channels and I cant get any drives to be recognized if I plug the into the other channel. Now, I do have an external usb enclosure and I tried putting one of the drives in there but knoppix doesnt seem to recognize that when it boots either.

I am in a real predicament and I need this to be solved by the end of the weekend if possible. thanks in advance!

[fingers99]

Not sure what's happening there, but, some things to check:

Check the cabling and jumpering of all drives. Linux is very picky about this. In particular, don't use cable select. FWIW, the master device can go to either of the end connectors, the slave must go to the middle and jumpering must be appropriate.

The CD-RW will probably enjoy being the secondary master.

Of course, after you've finished tweaking, you'll have to re-set the bios for the drives to show up to any OS.

External enclosures can be a PITA: does lsusb show up anything interesting?

[apoc]

Great, I will double check all the jumpers and drive positions one more time. Can a drive exist on a cable with the CD-RW and how does the CD-RW get set to secondary master? Where should it be placed on the cable?

If its not obvious, I am a newb to linux so I dont know what lsusb is or how to check if it shows anything interesting. Thanks for the help so far though!

[fingers99]

There should'nt bre any problem with the CD-RW. To set it as master first, set the jumpers to the master position (usually there's a little diagram on the drive, failing that, take a look on the manufacturer's website), then, plug the IDE cable in so that the CD takes either of the end plugs (there will be 3 on the cable -- the middle one must be used for the slave device or left empty).

To run lsusb, just open a terminal (the TV screen icon at the bottom left) and type

lsusb <enter>

and it should show you (albeit in rather too much detail) all the usb devices found.