Reading data from USB attached SATA drive

**wguimb** · 02-22-2009, 10:24 PM

Hi everyone. Let me first state that I LOVE Knoppix Live CD 6.0.1! It's fast and very easy to use. I also really like this forum and all the great help you folks are providing. I burnt a copy to CD, booted it and it came right up with no problems really.

Ok, before I ask my question, I should tell you my experience level. I have been involved with computers (every kind) for over 35 years (yes, I am old fart). I have some experience with Linux (many variants, including RedHat Suse, and AIX), SunOS, Windows (every version), and I am currently a beta tester for Microsoft. Most of my experience is with Windows based systems. My official job with a large company is network related. I haven't played with Linux in a long while but I understand the fundamentals and most commands.

Now to my question. I have read the FAQ's and performed many searches on this forum, but alas, I have not found the answer to my direct question. The question is "How do I mount an external USB attached harddrive in Live CD so that I can read the data off it and copy the data to my internal NTFS hard drive on the computer?" What I am attempting is to recover data from a SATA 500GB drive formatted by Linux which was taken out of a failed NAS device (Lacie 1TB NAS, the controller card went bad). The drive is working fine and I can see the ext3 partitions on it using a wide variety of tools (such as explore2fs, DiskInternal Linux Reader, ex2IFS, various Partition Managers, etc.). I can read the contents of the extended partition (5 logical disks) but I can't read the primary partition on the drive (which is where all my precious memories are stored). It shows unfomatted. The drive in question is attached to a USB port using an Apricorn DriveWire adapter. So, it dawned on me that I need to read the primary partition using Linux. That's where Knoppix Live CD comes into the picture.

When the Knoppix Live CD boots, I see the file structure of the CD and the file structure of the computer's internal 250GB PATA drive with Windows XP on it. I just can't see the USB attached storage.

I'm sorry far the verboseness of this topic but I'm just that way.

PS. I have screenshots of the partitions if needed.

**wguimb** · 03-02-2009, 05:27 AM

I guess no one is interested in helping me. It's been over a week since I posted.

**wguimb** · 03-21-2009, 10:45 PM

*Bump* Hello, can someone point me in the right direction please?

**Harry Kuhman** · 03-22-2009, 12:10 AM

Originally Posted by wguimb

......and copy the data to my internal NTFS hard drive...

Originally Posted by wguimb

*Bump* Hello, can someone point me in the right direction please?

It is not safe to write to NTFS with Knoppix.

**OErjan** · 03-22-2009, 11:36 AM

if you wish you could just try seeing what the disk is called and mount it.
to see what it is called, attach it AFTER boot and then let it be for a while (2-3min max)
now type

Code:

dmesg

the last entry with something like sda, sdb... folowed by a number is your disk and its partitions.
say the disk is called /dev/sda and the partition is /dev/sda1
now you type

Code:

mount /mnt/sda1

or

Code:

mount /media/sda1

this should allow reading of the disk, the hard part is writing , this as few dare write to NTFS as it may corrupt entire disk.
if it was me and no file was above 3.9Gig i would use a FAT32 filesystem (perhaps on another USB disk?) and copy files there, that would put them somewhere accessible for Windows

here is a link with some more
http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/Rescue_FAQ