Knoppix to recover data from corrupt ntfs

Right, bit of an update. My last post said about Knoppix just going into a blank screen.
Well i gave up trying to get the data off and unpacked the new drive that i bought from OcUk. Went to install and Windows installer froze at the Windows setup stage...hmmm odd. Anyway next step was to run memtest, did this and boom failed like 10k or something within the first min !
Anyway, took one stick out and all was fine, put the other stick in and would not even post.
So looks like the ram died taking the drive down with it.

Anyway, formating the new drive now. Wil install windows and then worry about getting the info off the old one.

Whilst i am here, i tried running knoppix again, and got further. It went through the detection stage and had my two penguins at the top of the screen etc. Still did not boot up though, screen went blank again, i guess this time though that its just down to boot settings?
 
Hmm, I don't know why Knoppix isn't booting properly, haven't recently had a look at it, however at a guess I'd guess there's something video card related going poof (there was some problems with certain video cards, a while ago, notably certain models of Radeon, maybe something like that - what card have you got and what release of Knoppix?)

Several things you can try.

1.) If knoppix has a "safe video mode" try that
2.) Try Another distro, e.g. Ubuntu Feisty perhaps(7.04)
3.) Download and burn TRK which I've linked to above. It's more low level and doesn't boot a full windowed desktop environment, so is very unlikely to run into graphics problems.

Once you've got your PC booting one way or another let me know and I'll try and walk you through copying everything off.

Aside: Your PC doesn't now boot with the dodgy RAM removed, does it? (Edit: I mean with the old drive, that is? And what about accessing the drive as slave?)
 
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~Divine~Wind~ said:
Same boat as you mate,

RAW HDD full of data, ran Filescavenger which looked like it was working, BSOD :(
Came back to a few files partially returned, tried running it again BSOD.

Just tried Ubuntu and that wont recognise it either :/
Click to expand...

To use Linux the partition must be properly "Labelled" as NTFS so that an attempt to mount it can be made. One way of doing this can be simply going into e.g. fdisk and changing the partition type back to NTFS from what it currently is. (It is also possible with some command line switches to manually force mount a partition as a specific type of filesystem, disregarding the type recorded in the boostector and partition table, but obviously you need to have more technical understanding of what you're doing.) I can perhaps try and help you to check/change the filesystem type and/or force mounting it under Ubuntu, but whether or not this will work depends on whether the filesystem damage is localised only to the partition table/boot sector (which is the actual cause of the "RAW" message) and or whether that's just a symptom of more widespread damage (in which case all bets are off.) Also, you should run a memory test (MemTest86) before doing anything else to make sure you don't also have a failed memory DIMM.

In any event, you might also try the following tool here and see what happens. They also discuss the RAW issue, here: http://www.z-a-recovery.com/art-raw-filesystem.htm
 
Right, this has kinda gone in two direction for me know. I have the machine with the new drive and windows loaded. It loaded after i took the damadged dimm out, so now just down to the 1gb or ram. All seems fine with that from what i can see. I will just get another 2gb matched pair and off i go again.

The other part is getting the data that i need off the corrupt drive. After i found that the ram was damadged i did try and put the old drive back in and boot with the single good ram, but still nothing. I am guessing that the ram failed, possible whilst writting and hence causing the ntfs.sys to be corrupted.

As for knoppix then i got it too boot as far as the two penguins on screen and it started to list the hardware and usb's etc, it got so far and just as i thought it was going to start the screen went blank again. I kinda agree that it does look like a gpu issue and i do have a radeon card (1900xt) I am guessing that there are some boot commands that i need to do before i continue at the start of Knoppix. If i get the chance i am going to try and do this at work today, as the machine i can use here is just a dell with onboard gpu etc. This is the machine that i tried booting with the corrupt drive as slave, with no luck.
The version of knoppix that i am using is 5.1, not sure of the build number though i could check as the iso is still on my desktop on another machine.

Thanks again ByteJuggler for you help.
 
Sherm said:
The version of knoppix that i am using is 5.1, not sure of the build number though i could check as the iso is still on my desktop on another machine.
Click to expand...

That should be sufficient for me to get the same version and try and duplicate what you're seeing. I have an older Radeon and am interested to see if I also get the black screen behaviour. (Do you have an AGP card?) If so I'd like to possibly report it to the suitable persons as I've seen this before, and since this problem should've been fixed already, if Knoppix still exhibits the problem then Knoppix may need to update something somewhere etc etc. In any case I can then try and see if I can help getting it to boot properly with suitable boot options etc.
 
Thanks again for helping with this. Like i said above i have not had a chance to try andy boot commands to see if i can get it too boot with my card, going to try later.
The only thing that i kinda thought of is, would the corrupt drive stop it from booting? obviously it stops windows from booting up and gives a blue screen, would Knoppix have an issue with this? I know that knoppix has its own ntfs system that it uses, just did not know if it has to read this drive at all when it is going through its boot sequence.
 
Sherm said:
Thanks again for helping with this. Like i said above i have not had a chance to try andy boot commands to see if i can get it too boot with my card, going to try later.
The only thing that i kinda thought of is, would the corrupt drive stop it from booting? obviously it stops windows from booting up and gives a blue screen, would Knoppix have an issue with this? I know that knoppix has its own ntfs system that it uses, just did not know if it has to read this drive at all when it is going through its boot sequence.
Click to expand...

It's very unlikely IMO to cause a problem during boot time, but I of course can't say for certain before n I've had had a look at what Knoppix specifically is set up to do during boot these days. They might've set it up to do some "automounting" to ease things for new users. That said, Linux generally doesn't mount/access the non-boot/root partitions automatically unless specifically set up to do so, which is why I say that broken filesystems won't affect it during booting by default.

Furthermore, I've never seen Linux choke up on a broken filesystem, ever, with something as serious as a kernel panic (the equivalent of a BSOD in Windows.) Generally you get an application level error message and that's it. So I don't think your problems booting is related to the broken disk. (Of course you can easily eliminate that from the equation, just disconnect the disk and see if Knoppix boots then or not.)
 
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Just trying to get knoppix working again. I can see that after it does its hardware stuff, the screen starts flashing and i can just see that its probing agp. Well i am not agp, bytejuggler, you mentioned agp ealier. Is there a boot option for this?
 
ok this is starting to do my head in now. I have tried turning off agp, using knoppix noagp command, then tried failsafe. Still does the same thing. gets to starting x system or something ( hard to see as the screen is flashing at this point), screen goes blank and thats it!
 
Please download TRK or Ubuntu or Slax and try them and see if they boot - it looks like Knoppix hasn't been updated since about the time I've seen that black screen issue before, it's therefore possible that it suffers from that or some similar problem. Once you've got one of these successfully booting I'll try and help you copy your stuff with whatever you're using. TRK remains my favourite as it includes scripts that help recovery (e.g. a "mountallfs" script which helps with mounting everything in sight.) It's not that hard, honest. :-)

(I will however download Knoppix myself and see if I can reproduce your case. Do you have the absolute latest, e.g. Knoppix 5.1.1 or just 5.1? E.g. does the ISO filename contain 5.1.1 or 5.1 only?)
 
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Right i have managed to get it to boot into the desktop enviroment, but using noacpi. From what i understand i should see my corrupt hard disk on the desktop? If not how do i go about trying to mount this drive? Its seen the usb that i connected, as this is what i will use to backup the files that i need.

Oh well, got a nice drive to Gatwick to look forward to and think about my actions ! back to it tonight though!


cheers
 
Sherm said:
Right i have managed to get it to boot into the desktop enviroment, but using noacpi. From what i understand i should see my corrupt hard disk on the desktop? If not how do i go about trying to mount this drive? Its seen the usb that i connected, as this is what i will use to backup the files that i need.

Oh well, got a nice drive to Gatwick to look forward to and think about my actions ! back to it tonight though!


cheers
Click to expand...

OK excellent glad you got it booting. I'll get Knoppix and try and work out a step by step list for you to follow (will have to way until tonight.)
 
My main problem though is that i cannot see my hardisks in Knoppix. The only way that i can get it to boot is to use the acpi=off command. Even if i try a good disk it won't mount anything to the desktop.

So i gather that using the acpi=off command disables the hardware mounting basically.....

lol it will see my usb key that i put in !, spose that is something:p

later tonight is fine mate, won't be back till then anyway as taking a mate tot the airport.

Thanks
 
Sherm said:
My main problem though is that i cannot see my hardisks in Knoppix. The only way that i can get it to boot is to use the acpi=off command. Even if i try a good disk it won't mount anything to the desktop.

So i gather that using the acpi=off command disables the hardware mounting basically.....

lol it will see my usb key that i put in !, spose that is something:p

later tonight is fine mate, won't be back till then anyway as taking a mate tot the airport.

Thanks
Click to expand...

Erm, ACPI stands for Advanced Configuration and Power Interface, so disabling it shouldn't affect your hardware other than disabling the power management features available via ACPI. So I'm not entirely sure why your other drive(s) aren't being auto mounted. The Knoppix 5.1.1 I'm posting from auto mounted every single drive in my system automatically (including my RAID0 array, which is rather impressive as that normally takes more fiddling about to use under Linux, and with with ACPI=off)

Anyway, please type the following command for me in a Terminal Window in Knoppix (avilable under "K menu"->System->Konsole Terminal Program):

Code: 
knoppix@Knoppix:~$ cat /proc/partitions

You'll get some output something as follows:
Code: 
   8     0  312567413 sda
   8     1    2596864 sda1
   8     2  273512140 sda2
   8    16   72613056 sdb
   8    17   72610816 sdb1
   8    32   72613056 sdc
   8    33  145223680 sdc1
   8    48   72613056 sdd
   8    64  488385527 sde
   8    65    2596864 sde1
   8    66  485787640 sde2
 240     0    1997952 cloop0
 254     0   72612992 dm-0
 254     1  145225984 dm-1
 254     2   72610816 dm-2
 254     3  145223680 dm-3

The sizes of the various visible disks and paritions are listed and will allow us to hopefully identify the target drive and partition to try and manually mount.

Note, you can easily copy and paste the text from the terminal window into your browser by marking it first (click and drag in the window) so its highlighted, then leaving it highlited, click on the browser and entry box where you're entering your post, and then *middle button* click (mousewheel click). This will copy and paste the text.
 
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hiya, thanks a lot for that, i only seem to get the cloop0, one up, nothing else. I am guessing that this works for sata?
 
Sherm said:
hiya, thanks a lot for that, i only seem to get the cloop0, one up, nothing else. I am guessing that this works for sata?
Click to expand...

It does support SATA yes. All my drives in fact are SATA (so all the stuff you see there is SATA.) Only getting cloop is really strange... Something weird going on then. I can't explain why Knoppix isn't seeing your disks, except to make the logical conclusion it being driver related (as with Windows not seeing certain drives on certain motherboards). Get one of the newer live cd's and see if it includes more drivers and/or sees your disks (TRK?, Ubuntu?, Slax?)
 
I am going to try it on my Dell machine at work tomorrow, i did not get a chance wednesday. If this is my machine then the dell should be simpler for it.....worth a try.

If not then do you have a link for me to download anothe version (don't have any torrent software whilst machine is down).


thanks
 
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