[Everything Inan]

my laptop decided to not work anymore, but i know the files are still intact. (laptop starts... starts to load XP.. but then theres a flash of the bluescreen of death, and it restarts)

i have a 120 Gig Maxtor portable Hardrive that connects Via USB. the question i put to you, is, how can i copy the files on the laptop c:\ drive to the portable maxtor drive so i can reformat the laptop without losing my ****?

its a toshiba notebook with windows xp. i have a knoppix cd, if that helps any, but keep in mind, i can get knoppix to run on the laptop, but thats about all i know about it. i have absolotely no background education on linux or whatever. i would need step by step instructions. i dont know what "partition" and "dd" means and all that funky fancy talk, lol. (those are common words i seem to see when i do searches to figure this stuff out) im not even that good at dos commands. (like all i know as far as dos commands go is what ive learned through trying to fix my laptop now and in the past.)

thank you, ill be back.

[horndude]

insert knoppix
let it boot
open a root terminal, it will be one of the menu options, right click mouse for menu
type lsusb, it should show the usb drive, it might not though
then type lsmod, look for scsi drivers being loaded, they should be by default
ok,at this point assuming knoppix sees the drive:
type mount /dev/sda /tmp
that should mount the drive on /tmp
then type mkdir /tmp2
then type mount /dev/hda2 /tmp2
then type cd /tmp2;ls and see if it lists the files,if so:
type cp * /tmp
that should do it
type umount /dev/sda and umount /dev/hda2 and shut it down


lots of potential problems here, these steps are pretty generic and make some assumptions like the usb drive being formatted already and the non boot up windows files being on /dev/hda2

[Everything Inan]

ok i got up to this point "ok,at this point assuming knoppix sees the drive:
type mount /dev/sda /tmp"

i typed: mount /dev/sda /tmp exactly like that and its only responce was:
"mount: you must specify the filesystem type"

?

[Everything Inan]

some notes that might help:

-oh, i didnt format the usb drive yet. its not a problem if i really have to, but i was wonderfin if that was possibly the reason for this unexpected responce?

-on the desktop of knoppix, the hardrive of my laptop appears as: "Hard Disk Partition [hda1]"

and the portable maxtor hd appears as: "Hard Disk Partition [sda1]"

[horndude]

if its already formatted try:
mount -t ntfs or -t fat32 /dev/sda /tmp depending on what filesystem it is

for options on the mount command you can type man mount, it will spit out a man page on that command

[horndude]

ok , well if its already showing you should be able to just drag one into the other, not sure about the format option, I havent used knoppix much

Id have to look up how to format it into fat32

from that terminal, type mount, that will show whats mounted, if its already mounted all you have to do is move one into the other, or whatever files you want to save

[Everything Inan]

ok well i tried formating the portable hardrive, and then dragging one drive onto the other. but it just says "could not create (whatever file)" when i try to either copy and paste or drag and file, folder, or the whole drive over.

[Everything Inan]

when i type "mount" it gives me a list of stuff and at the bottom it says: "/dev/hda1 on /mnt/hda1 type ntfs (ro,nosuid,nodev,umask=000,uid=1000,gid=1000)
/dev/sda1 on /mnt/sda1 type ntfs (ro,nosuid,nodev,umask=000,uid=1000,gid=1000)"

i tried typing "mount -t ntfs" but it spat out the same thing as said above: "/dev/hda1 on /mnt/hda1 type ntfs (ro,nosuid,nodev,umask=000,uid=1000,gid=1000)
/dev/sda1 on /mnt/sda1 type ntfs (ro,nosuid,nodev,umask=000,uid=1000,gid=1000)"

[horndude]

it needs mounted probably, linux wont do anything with a drive unless its mounted first

use the terminal and make sure they are BOTH mounted somewhere

then use cd and move into the directory of the hard drive in the laptop and then use cp * /dev/sda or cp * /dev/sda1 to move everything into it

cd= change driectory
cp=copy
ls=list
now that the drive is formatted it should show up as /dev/sda1

[horndude]

ok its already mounted, thats good
just type cd /mnt/hda1;ls that will put you in the top of the laptop HD directory and list its contents, now with winXP you may need to be in /dev/hda2 or /mnt/hda2 once its mounted to get the actual files you want(I think XP uses 2 partitons,one for boot,and one for the actual files), to do that you can unmount it altogether or just mount /dev/hda2 somewhere like /tmp,then cd /tmp;ls to list it

then use cp and cp * /mnt/sda1

in linux a drive has to be mounted, it also has to mounted somewhere, once it is, it becomes just another file, it can be moved,copied,erased, whatever