[titanania]

Hey Tech Guys,

I have a major problem.

Ok, I have a previously Windows XP Home laptop. It corrupted itself (As Windows tends to do) and someone suggested that I get Knoppix to boot it and save the data (http://forums.techguy.org/windows-nt...-screwup.html). However, I have a problem, the laptop only has one drive!

So how am I supposed to run Knoppix on the same drive I'm supposed to be burning from? Losing the data on this laptop is not an option.

Any and all help is accepted and appreciated.

Thank you in advance.

[win2kpro]

If you don't have a USB external HDD try to borrow one. I use an external on all the rescues I do with Knoppix and it's much easier than burning disks.

[titanania]

So it will recognize the external HDD?

[titanania]

Not to be rude, Win2kpro but my question still hasn't been answered about burning... I don't have instant access to a external HDD and I have some data that needs to be gotten off quickly

[prunejuice]

Get a lighter weight, Knoppix based distro and use the toram option at boot.
This will load the entire distro into the system's RAM.
You can then pop out the disk, and insert a blank for your burning purposes.

Hopefully you have 512MB + of RAM, although you might get away with 256MB, depending on
the Knoppix variant.

[win2kpro]

I don't know how much data you need to save but you could use a flash drive, external zip drive, etc. and just move a little at a time until you get it to another machine. Does anyone you know have a USB external CD burner?

[titanania]

I have both an external Cd Burner and a flash drive, the question is will Knoppix recognize those devices?

[win2kpro]

Plug them in and see. I know when I use Knoppix it recognizes my External HDD and flash drive, never tried it with a external burner.

[titanania]

Well it recognizes my flash drive but whenever I try to copy data onto it, the prgram encounters an error.

[Cyps]

I digress, but did you try to repair your PC disk by booting up with the Windows XP CD and choosing the Repair option? You then need to type this at the command prompt

chkdsk p/r

or chkdsk c: p/r

then press Enter key

This can cure boot problems and others and is worth a try. Best of luck

[titanania]

I've tried that and the repair console won't even start....

Now I've plugged a external HDD and it is encountering a non-writable error. When I mount it and try to change the read/write status it says the filesystem is already in use. This is really beginning to tick me off.

[titanania]

I found out that the problem is that both the drives are NTFS. Someone said there's a way to get Linux to work with NTFS but I sure as heck can't figure it out. Does anyone know how Ntfsprogs works????

[gotrootdude]

Look, I don't know if this has already been suggested or not, but I'd boot your XP disk and reinstall another copy of windows in another folder. Then use the new copy to access the old one's data.

Once your done getting the data out, you can edit the boot.ini file and remove the entry for the first copy, then simply delete the folder the old copy was in. Or take the machine to a computer tech store to try to recover the first copy.

[saikee]

As a rule a PC user can always use any Linux to read the content of a NTFS partition and write the data on a Fat16 or Fat32 partition, absolutely without any bother!

To ask a Linux to write on a NTFS partition is still experimental and Knoppix has the captive write facilitiy for this task.

Putting the data in a Fat32 partition is far more efficient unless the size of the file exceeding the 4Gb limit of Fat32.

It may be a good idea to always store personal data on a separate Fat32 partition so that

(1) It can be read and written by both Windows and Linux

(2) The personal data never die with any operating system.

(3) The footprint of the personal data is compact and can be easily backup.

[Cyps]

Originally Posted by titanania

I found out that the problem is that both the drives are NTFS. Someone said there's a way to get Linux to work with NTFS but I sure as heck can't figure it out. Does anyone know how Ntfsprogs works????

Yes, Knoppix can read and write to FAT, FAT32, and NTFS partitions. To write to NTFS partitions you have to take advantage of the captive-ntfs package (Kmenu->Knoppix->Utilities->Captive NTFS) but otherwise with FAT or FAT32 partitions you can just click on hard drives icons to browse the filesystem.