Quote Originally Posted by nodoz
im using knoppix live cd to mount a damaged drive. It sees the drive but "could not mount device" due to "could not determine file system type".

when i ran a few commands I found on this forum it told me ntfs is inconsistent. I don't really understand what ntfs state has to do with this in knoppix.

I am happy to pay someone fifty bucks to find a way to fix this error if you want to pm me.
If it's a Windows partition with a NTFS file system, then this message is trying to tell you that Knoppix can't make sense of what it thinks is a windows drive. If it's not a Windows partition, then it's so mucked up that Knoppix thinks it is.

Sometimes (and by that I mean fairly often), Windows will muck up a NTFS partition so badly that even Linux can't read it. If that is the case you have a serious problem (I have 3 drives like this). But sometimes the partition itself is fine, but the partition table is mucked up. In that case the Linux commands gpart or testdisk may be able to examine the disk and determine what the partition table should be and repair it for you. See the man pages for gpart and testdisk for details. pm me for an address to send the $50 to.