Trying to recover files using DSL

Forum: DSL Tips and Tricks
Topic: Trying to recover files using DSL
started by: thisaintsweettea

Posted by thisaintsweettea on April 07 2006,03:49

Ok, well something became corrupted on my new hard drive, and windows seems to think the drive is not formatted. It sees it as RAW file system. I can use a recovery program but jesus, i would just like to recover as much as i can.

anyhow...

How/where do i locate my secondary drive in DSL?

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.

Posted by anaconda on April 07 2006,07:25

I have had similar problems with my hard-disk...
the problem is propably a corrupted Master Boot Record (MBR). MBR is the place, where partition information is stored. (partition table is in bytes 446-510 at the end of MBR..)

The files are probaply still on your hard-disk, but they cant be seen and the partition can't be accessed with any os, until the partition table is restored..

here is a link that saved most of my data.. don't remember which of those rescue utilities did the job for me... but it analyzed the whole disk (in about 60min) and found the lost partitions.

< http://www.s2services.com/partitionmgrsfreeware.htm >

You can also try to mount the partitions with DSL (if the problem isn´t MBR)

this is how it is done using terminal:

Code Sample

sudo su
mkdir /mnt/hdb1 (if it doesn't exist already)
mount /dev/hdb1 /mnt/hdb1

if you know that the partition type is ntfs you can add between mount and /dev.. -t ntfs
Or if the type is fat32 then add -t vfat. (Usually the -t option isn't needed.)

If that was succesful you can find your 2.nd hard-disks first partition in /mnt/hdb1.

You can try the same command for the other partitions. for 2.nd partition use /dev/hdb2 ... etc.

Posted by anaconda on April 07 2006,07:32

Or you could try to mount using emelfm.

Just go to /mnt/hdb1 click it with your left mousebutton (to select hdb1) and then click your right mousebutton and select mount.

try the same with hdb2, hdb3 etc..

If your new hard disk is SATA disk then you have to use DSL 2.1 (or was it 2.1b ??) because newest DSL doesn't understand sata disks...

Hope You can restore your data:O

Posted by 300c_pilot on April 08 2006,23:01

If it is a fat file system you can use the "fdisk /mbr" command at a dos prompt to rebuild the master boot record. If you use the fdisk command, boot from a floppy and with only that hard drive plugged in.Your Linux OS has to have the NTFS option compiled into the kernel for you to mount an NTFS partition. If both of these do not work...then...

Get a hex editor and hopefully you do not have very much to recover. I personally recover files for business's in this area with a hex editor and the good old dd command. You can get our stuff back...

PM me if you have to go this far.

Posted by pr0f3550r on April 09 2006,10:51

With Knoppix 3.2 once I resumed to life a corrpted windows partition. I don't remember the name of the program, it was in the tools menu, it completely scanned the hard drive and rebuilt the windows boot loader. It'd be nice to build .dsl extension from that program