hdd mount error. please help!

[stuble07]

i was having trouble with an external hdd using windows. it would not show up under my computer. i was told to try knoppix to see if i could access the data from the drive to copy it over. the drive shows up on the dexktop but when i click on it i get this message...

Could not mount device.
The reported error was:
mount: I could not determine the filesystem type, and none was specified

since knoppix is new to me i was wondering what to do from here. thanks.

[Harry Kuhman]

to see if i could access the data from the drive to copy it over....

It sounds like Knoppix can't determine what format the partition(s) on the external drive is/are, which is very strange. Are there partitions on the external dirve (it would seem there are if you want to copy data from it)? What partition type was used? What happened to this external drive that you can't get the files back with the system that wrote it?

While Knoppix usually is great at recovering data even when Windows will not, there are certainly circumatances where Knoppix can't recover the data. If the data has been completely erased, for example, or if the drive is part of a RAID set, or a full raid set that needs a special Windows only software driver, or if the drive has been encrypted in some way with the encryption software only being available for the original OS.