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Panic mode: HD not working

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Bob2004:
A couple of things about what Kira said; firstly the drive ID may have a number at the end (eg /dev/sda0), which represents the partition number. So each physical drive will be identified as /dev/sda, /dev/sdb, etc, and the partitions will be numbered from 0 up. In order to mount it, even if it only has one parition, you might have to specify the partition too. GParted should tell you all this though.

Also, I'd advise against mounting the drives directly to /media and /mnt. If you have any disc drives, they will usually be mounted as /media/cdrom0 or similar, and since it's a livecd there might be a /mnt/ramdisk or something too (I'm not sure) - this could cause a number of problems if there are folders and stuff already in the folder you want to mount to, so it's better to be safe. You'll want to create a couple of new folders first, (such as /mnt/brokendrive and /mnt/backupdrive, or whatever you want) then mount the drives to them. I can't remember the command for creating a new folder (it's been a year or two since I last used Linux), but hopefully Kira or someone can tell you.

All that said, don't bother. Seriously. Linux is not going to be any more likely to read the drive than Windows is, it's a pretty complicated process trying to (compared to Windows, anyway), and you really, really, really do not want to be mounting and trying to access your broken drive any more than you have to, in case it does fail. As a last resort, sure, but try a few different recovery programs first.

rkruger:
I would recommend using SystemRescueCD. It's a Linux live CD (or USB if you want) that has all the tools needed for a job like this. (It even has a GUI if you are afraid of the command line.) With other distros, it's really a hit-or-miss on what's included, so you may need to download additional stuff.

Anyway, if the root cause of this problem is that the file system is messed up, your best bet is really to use a forensic-style tool to recover the data based on headers and such. There is a tool named "foremost" included in SystemRescueCD that can do tasks like this, but unfortunately this tool is only configured for certain files types out-of-the-box. Last time i checked, it did not support MKV files for instance, which I would guess most of your files are.

Freedom Kira:

--- Quote from: Bob2004 on January 21, 2012, 11:30:16 AM ---A couple of things about what Kira said; firstly the drive ID may have a number at the end (eg /dev/sda0), which represents the partition number. So each physical drive will be identified as /dev/sda, /dev/sdb, etc, and the partitions will be numbered from 0 up. In order to mount it, even if it only has one parition, you might have to specify the partition too. GParted should tell you all this though.

Also, I'd advise against mounting the drives directly to /media and /mnt. If you have any disc drives, they will usually be mounted as /media/cdrom0 or similar, and since it's a livecd there might be a /mnt/ramdisk or something too (I'm not sure) - this could cause a number of problems if there are folders and stuff already in the folder you want to mount to, so it's better to be safe. You'll want to create a couple of new folders first, (such as /mnt/brokendrive and /mnt/backupdrive, or whatever you want) then mount the drives to them. I can't remember the command for creating a new folder (it's been a year or two since I last used Linux), but hopefully Kira or someone can tell you.

All that said, don't bother. Seriously. Linux is not going to be any more likely to read the drive than Windows is, it's a pretty complicated process trying to (compared to Windows, anyway), and you really, really, really do not want to be mounting and trying to access your broken drive any more than you have to, in case it does fail. As a last resort, sure, but try a few different recovery programs first.

--- End quote ---

Yes, that's true. Ubuntu 11.10 mounts the cdrom to /cdrom and not to the /mnt or /media directories, but the distro you pick may mount to /mnt/cdrom or /media/cdrom. Ubuntu 10.04 apparently mounts the cdrom to /media/cdrom or /media/cdrom0.

Anyway, you will want to run the commands:

--- Code: ---
mkdir /mnt/broken
mkdir /mnt/backup
--- End code ---
... to create the directories Bob2004 mentioned, and then change your mount commands to these directories instead of /media or /mnt. Also change your mount devices to /dev/sdxy, where x is probably a or b, and y is probably 1. The partition you want to mount will be shown within the sdx drive in GParted, and should be the largest partition on the drive.

GoGeTa006:
that linux thing sounds complicated. . .but from what I understand linux has this "recovery" thing implemented already? its a built in feature? or is it just because linux can read everything you plug in without an index?

anyways, from the looks of those instructions it seems a little toughie. . .I'll try the recovery software since it is there for a reason. . .let's hope it all goes well. . .I shall begin this on monday once I can go home and grab some extra SATA cables

Bob2004:

--- Quote from: GoGeTa006 on January 21, 2012, 08:03:53 PM ---that linux thing sounds complicated. . .but from what I understand linux has this "recovery" thing implemented already? its a built in feature? or is it just because linux can read everything you plug in without an index?

--- End quote ---

Nope, I think the only reason anyone suggested it in the first place is because it's not Windows, rather than because it actually does something useful (for your purposes). Honestly, the only advantage of using Linux is if you find a recovery program which only runs in Linux; the OS itself probably won't do anything different to Windows. It was of course written by different people to Windows, and therefore the drive mounting code is different, and therefore there's a chance it might be more error-tolerant - and therefore might be able to read the drive when Windows can't. But I highy doubt it.

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