daddymac117

Hey guys,

My friend's XP installation on her Toshiba Satellite A75-S2112 laptop crapped out on her, so I told her I'll recover all of her files and reinstall XP for her.

Im running a Knoppix 5.0.1 live CD in the laptop, and im using SuSE 10.0 on my desktop to network with the laptop. There's about 8.5gb worth of stuff to recover from the laptop's NTFS drive, which is way too much to attempt to upload somewhere then download again from this desktop, so I decided to try and share the entire drive (or at least just the files i want to recover) within my home network.

Samba is fully enabled, and I'm currently able to share individual files between Knoppix's /home directory and my SuSE box, so Ive been archiving each folder and sending the archive manually through the network, which is taking alot longer than i thought it would. Currently, i have to move every folder that i want to share into the /home directory, zip it (since i cant get it to share a folder and all of its contents), then share that archived file to be retrieved from the desktop's end. Lather, rinse, repeat. Any folder larger than 200mb seems to lag everything terribly, and eventually the entire laptop freezes, which is why this method isnt really working out that great for me.

Ideally, I want to just be able to share the entire mounted NTFS drive within my home network, so i can access the files from my SuSE desktop and backup the files here so i can reformat the laptop...the only problem is that im relatively new to networking itself (and especially Samba), and I can't figure out how to get Knoppix to allow me to share the entire NTFS drive without me having to copy everything to my /home directory for sharing.

Can this be done, am i stuck with my current method, or does anyone have any easier suggestions for me to get the job done?

Thanks in advance!

Slipstick86

I haven't personally used Samba, but I heard a similar complaint: Files have to first be zipped, put in the home directory, and then sent, and even then the network is tediously slow and inevitably crashes.

Solution: Use FTP. I downloaded the free FTP server software Serv-U by Rhino Software (or something like that), installed it on a remote desktop on the home network, then connected to it from my crashed laptop (also running XP).

Once you get Serv-U running, make sure to say yes to allowing anonymous users when it asks during your first time running the program. Also make sure to dedicate a folder for such anonymous users. Then from a Konqueror window in Knoppix, type ftp://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx, putting in the servers IP address on the home network instead of the x's.

I did it and it worked great, but I also ran into another problem. Part way through copying files it stops with the error: "Cannot create folder (name of folder)." I haven't been able to fix that as of yet, so if you by chance have any input, please share.

Hope that helps!

daddymac117

Thanks for the reply, but I actually recieved an even easier suggestion from another Knoppix forum.

I used the Knoppix CD on the laptop with the dead XP installation, just to be able to access the files. Once the drive you're trying to access is mounted, open up a root shell, and type in the commands:

That enabled an FTP server from within Knoppix, I was then able to FTP into that laptop using "knoppix" as the username and the 'knoppix' user password to gain access. To set a new password for knoppix, type in the terminal, and set a new password.

From there, i was able to change into the desired drive "/media/hda1" and transfer everything that i wanted at about 11mb/s.

I just decided to mention that here anyway, incase anybody else runs into the same problem and finds this thread in a search lol.

unclebubbles

Would you mind sharing the name of the other forum?? Never hurts to have another source of info.
Thanks

daddymac117

sure, it was the Knoppix.net forum: http://www.knoppix.net/forum/