Using linux to recover xp files

[sbweb77]

I have a hard drive with xp loaded, wont boot, checking the drive partition is "unknown type". Drive is failing. Have discovered that I can access the drive using knoppix, but the folder i want shows up with a lock and when i go to open says i dont have permission. The folder was made private under xp. Anyway around this?

[alechank12]

I had this same problem before. I was able to get my locked files back by installing Win2000 as a dual boot OS. It let me access the NTFS partition. From there I burnt my files to a CD. I hope this helps.

[syscrash2k]

  sbweb77 said:

I have a hard drive with xp loaded, wont boot, checking the drive partition is "unknown type". Drive is failing. Have discovered that I can access the drive using knoppix, but the folder i want shows up with a lock and when i go to open says i dont have permission. The folder was made private under xp. Anyway around this?

Open a terminal in knoppix, and type

su

When it asks for a password, press enter. Then cd to the directory that your windows partition is mounted

cd /mnt/yourwindowsdrivehere

Then you can get files from there as root. If you need more help, just ask ;)

[sbweb77]

thanks for both suggestions. it well be tomorrow before i get a chance to mess with the drive. haven't really messed with linux downloaded knoppix to give it a try.

when you say "cd /mnt/yourwindowsdrivehere"

would yourwindowsdrivehere = hd0 (i assume its not C:) (like i said very new to linux)

[metal_dragen Veteran]

Well, you would have to mount the Windows drive first before changing dirs. If your Windows part is the first one on the disk, then something like this might work for you.

# mkdir /mnt/windows
# mount -r -t ntfs /dev/hda1 /mnt/windows
# cd /mnt/windows

and you should be in your Windows filesystem. As mentioned above, you may need to su to root before entering the Windows filesystem.