Please help me use Ubuntu to retrieve sata from crashed computer.

[tom]

On Mon, 2006-03-13 at 12:13 -0500, Gail Gatewayone wrote:
> Hi...
> 
> My Dell Dimension 4550 (about 3 years old) w/ 512 MB RAM gave me a BSOD for
> an IRQ_NOT_EQUAL etc. error over the weekend.
> 
> I downloaded Ubutu because someone told me I could use the Linux Live CD to
> retrieve files from the internal HDD and save them on my external USB HDD.
> 
> UBUTU recognizes the USB drive w/ no problem but does not see the internal
> HDD. I wrote this query to the newsgroup and got a reply to search for the
> drive through Disk Manager, Make a new folder for it in \mnt\ and enable the
> drive. Well I did that and nothing happened. So I changed the path for the
> internal drive to the one the USB drive uses and now the internal drive
> shows up there but says I don't have permissions to access it.
> 
> It's one of those so-close-and-yet-so-far-away situations it seems. Please
> tell me how I can do this simple task and get on w/ reformatting my drive
> and reinstalling Win XP (and probably Ubutu's Linux also!) Can you help me
> PULEEASE!
> 
> Thanks so much in advance!
> Gail Miller
> 
Gail,

If this is your first direct involvement with linux then you have a
reasonably steep learning curve to go through or prepared to try things
which you may not fully understand.

The best place for information such as this is in the ubuntu starter
guide, and the specific information you seek is here at 5.1 (since you
are using Win XP (ntfs style partition) :

http://help.ubuntu.com/starterguide/C/faqguide-all.html#fg-windows-partitions

the two commands you need to execute in a terminal window are ...

a) create a point in your file system (make a directory entry with the
mkdir command) where the physical device can be mounted (mount
point) .... 

	sudo mkdir /media/windows 

b) actually mount the physical device (assuming it to be hda1 as it most
likely is) at that point

	sudo mount /dev/hda1 /media/windows/ -t ntfs -o umask=0222

in this latter item you can see that the physical item /dev/hda1 is
being mounted on the mount point you created with the mkdir command and
that the type is specified as an ntfs partition ("-t ntfs") and that we
have specified some further option (in this case we are setting
permissions as to who may read the file) through the "-o umask=0222"
which essentially means that anyone may read but no one may write to the
partition.  

NB  Linux (ie ubuntu) can quite happily read an ntfs partition but at
this stage linux should not be used to write to an ntfs partition other
than experimentally.

You should reasonably happily be able to read your win xp files and be
able to copy them to the usb drive since you have said that the livecd
recognises it satisfactorily.

One small reminder is that in linux the slash goes like "/" not like "\"
as in windows ..... i make this point only because of what may otherwise
have been a typo where you mention "\mnt\" when you of course would have
meant "/mnt" 

Now, having executed the above commands, you should see the hda1
partition on your desktop and by double clicking on it you will open it
in nautilus and from there you may access any of the files and copy them
to your usb drive by the usual drag/drop method.

Please let us know how you get on.

Chris