[zymex]

Hey everyone. I have a big problem. I have dual OS on my PC (WinXP and RedHat 6.0) and use GRUB as my boot agent. When I was installing my RedHat I set up my C drive to be WinXP and D drive to have Linux on it. My boot, swap and one NTFS partitions are also on D drive. Couple of weeks ago my D drive died on me(errors log says bad sectors) and I cannot access my NTFS partition nor Linux at all. GRUB still works and it let me load into WinXP. I cannot remove my D drive to send it back to manufacturer though because my boot partition is on it. Can anyone help me?????

Thank you.
Zymex

[codejockey]

Yikes! -- sounds like you're hurting, for sure, but maybe there's a few things that might help you out ...

Do you have a boot disk for Linux? If so, you can use that to boot Linux and perhaps get access to your Linux partitions. Then, backup your data like crazy (maybe multiple times); you can always re-install the O/S, but your data can't be reproduced easily. No boot disk? Try using your installation CD; if you can get to a command prompt, you can try to mount your Linux partitions and recover your data that way. No boot disk and not able to get to a command prompt from your installation CD? Manufacturers often include utilities to copy a drive with their disks; often, the utilities allow you to specify one or more partitions to be copied. If you have space on your C: drive, you may be able to create additional partitions and use the manufacturer utility to copy data from your D: drive partition(s) to the C: drive.

To use Linux to recover your NTFS partition, you will likely have to have a boot disk with a kernel that knows how to read NTFS partitions -- which RedHat does not support. If you know any other Linux users who use a distribution such as Mandrake or Slackware, they may be able to create a boot disk for you that will allow you to access your (Linux and) NTFS partitions.

Hope this helps -- more info appreciated.