recently, my old trusty xp machine gave up the ghost. it was the last assembled desktop i owned ... fortunately, i had enough spare usable parts to assemble a usable pc. unfortunately, i now find myself in this predicament:
i am attempting to recover the files on the os partition of the main hdd with a 'recovery' usb flash drive install of linuxmint 11 (i know, it's old*). unfortunately, nautilus 2.32.2.1 is only listing the data partition and it is listing that partition as being as large as the entire drive.
the files on the data partition are visible and accessible without error. the os partition is nowhere to be found -except in gparted, which lists both partitions as being mounted, in /dev/sda1 and /dev/sda2 respectively. the os partition, /dev/sda1, is un-unmountable; i get an error that reads:
... i have no idea how to do that.The partition could not be unmounted from these mount points. Most likely another partition is mounted on these mount points. You are advised to unmount them manually
'sudo parted -l' gives me this:
as far as i can tell, /dev/sda, /dev/sda1 and /dev/sda2 do not exist in nautilus.sudo parted -l
Model: ATA ST3200822A (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 200GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 32.3kB 13.2GB 13.2GB primary ntfs boot
2 13.2GB 200GB 187GB primary ntfs
Model: Kingston DT 101 G2 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdb: 7999MB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 1049kB 6925MB 6924MB primary ext4 boot
2 6926MB 7997MB 1072MB extended
5 6926MB 7997MB 1072MB logical linux-swap(v1)
Warning: Unable to open /dev/fd0 read-write (Read-only file system). /dev/fd0
has been opened read-only.
Error: /dev/fd0: unrecognised disk label
/dev/fd0 is a zerosize file.
how can i fix this? i really would like to recover the files on the os partition.
curiously, i actually made these partitions in linuxmint using gparted, after xp was installed, and have previously been able to access both partitions perfectly with this install of linuxmint ... but of course, that was with the old pc.
the current pc has these specs:
cpu: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ 2.4GHz
mobo: msi k9mm-v
ram: 2gb ddr2
hdd: pata 200 gb seagate barracuda 7200.7 on cable select
*linuxmint used to be -for me at least- the os that 'just works.' that's why it is designated as my recovery os. however, my experience with linuxmint 13 was thoroughly dissatisfactory. it was incredibly buggy and unstable across multiple, different, otherwise stable systems. ... for some reason, i just could not get it into a stable, usable state. there were graphical glitches, intermittent pauses, and a lot of stuff just didn't work ... it was unusable. hence, my recovery os remains an older version of linuxmint.
EDIT: i've attempted to access the hdd using a pata cable and with a pata to sata adapter, with the same result..