Copying A Disk

[Karl Larsen]

Pete Holsberg wrote:
> Karl Larsen wrote:
>   
>> Pete Holsberg wrote:
>>   
>>     
>>> My stepson's Dell laptop's HD suffered a failure, probably a head crash, 
>>> and would no longer boot.  
>>>     
>>>       
>>     OK. What version of Windows does the laptop have installed?
>>   
>>     
>
> Media Center
>
>   
>>> I removed it and connected to my Windows XP machine  via a SATA/USB 
>>> external adapter cable.  
>>>     
>>>       
>>     This I assume is a external box that you mounted the laptop hard 
>> drive in and it brings the hard drive out to a USB port. 
>>     
>
> Actually there's no enclosure. See 
> <http://www.xpcgear.com/idesataadapter.html>
>   
>> This is a 
>> problem to start with. The laptop hard drive was not loaded from the USB 
>> port so you can't expect this to work.
>>   
>>     
>
> I don't want to boot from the drive, just hook iot as an external HD.
>
>   
>>> XP recognized it and allowed me to copy files. At one point, it hung and 
>>> started giving me paging errors.  
>>>     
>>>       
>>     How many files did you copy with success? Was it 3 or 100 or a 
>> thousand? I am surprised you got any :-)
>>   
>>     
>
> 100s Why are you surprised?
>   
>>> My Vista machine didn't like it at all, and knocked out the USB 
>>> controller. Rebooting brought it back.  
>>>     
>>>       
>>     What version of windows is on the laptop? It must be windows XP 
>> since your Vista would not read it.
>>   
>>     
>
> What??
>
>   
>>> A SUSE guy on a Windows mailing list suggested connecting it to my Linux 
>>> camputer.  
>>>     
>>>       
>>     The goal is I guess is to get as much off the broken hard drive as 
>> possible. I think the best thing to do is mount the laptop hard drive to 
>> your Linux computer. 
>>   
>>     
>
> Isn't that what I was saying?
>
>   
>>     With fdisk look at the HD and discover the partition name of the 
>> windows. Now mount that partition on your Linux. This step might be 
>> difficult depending on the file system.
>>   
>>     
>
> sudo fdisk /dev/sdb
>
> Unable to read /dev/sdb
>
> ???
>
>   
    What you do is this:

$ sudo fdisk /dev/sda and if that fails try sdb and so forth. I would 
expect it to be sda because windows likes to be in the first partition :-)

But if it is connected to your computer via the USB port it may be 
impossible to find. Then look for /dev/sdf1 and the whole hard drive 
will have that address.

Karl




-- 

	Karl F. Larsen, AKA K5DI
	Linux User
	#450462   http://counter.li.org.
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