[SOLVED] Help backing up NTFS drive

[aldretemichel]

Hi

So I've been trying almost for a week now to backup my XP SATA boot drive since it crashed and sent me the message unable to load OS. I am running Knoppix 6.2 Live CD. Everything went smooth on the beginning, I booted from the CD, explored my NTFS drive found out that my files remained all there, i opened some of them just to make sure they were not corrupted or something and then went on and bought and formated (ext3) a new drive to backup the original drive, and once I was ready to get started I couldn't get the data from one drive to the other.

Here is the thing, my Desktop only shows up two icons one is Knoppix and the other one is My Docs, so I went to PCMan File Manager and once there tried unmounting the destination drive to get the info from the source drive copied. However i realized that everytime i unmounted the drive PCMan displayed on the bottom of the screen - "n visible files (n hidden). Free space. 0 byte (total. 0 byte)" - (n being any number of course) so i assumed that the info wasn't really getting where i wanted it to get, so i mounted the drive double cheked and find out that as a matter of fact nothing was really copied to it, so i tried going into file properties changing the write permissions but it won't let me, if i try to copy files to a mounted disk the screen will just burst into flames, if i try the same procedure above through root shell instead of the graphic interphase it wont work either.

One last thing the route for my drives are as follow.
XP boot drive /media/sda1
Second partition on XP drive /media/sda2
New ext3 formatted drive /media/sdb1

Thanks in advance.

[devils casper]

Hi and Welcome !

Did you copy files as root user? By default, Regular Users don't have write permission on Linux partitions unless root user gives ownership of Linux partitions to Regular User.

Post the output of df -h and id commands here.

df -h
id

[aldretemichel]

Hi and Welcome !

Did you copy files as root user? By default, Regular Users don't have write permission on Linux partitions unless root user gives ownership of Linux partitions to Regular User.

Post the output of df -h and id commands here.

df -h
id

Hi

Here is the output for both commands.

root@Microknoppix:~# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sr0 689M 689M 0 100% /mnt-system
tmpfs 1.0G 8.4M 1016M 1% /ramdisk
/dev/cloop 1.9G 1.9G 0 100% /KNOPPIX
unionfs 1.0G 8.4M 1016M 1% /UNIONFS
unionfs 1.0G 8.4M 1016M 1% /home
tmpfs 10M 76K 10M 1% /UNIONFS/var/run
tmpfs 10M 0 10M 0% /UNIONFS/var/lock
tmpfs 100M 108K 100M 1% /UNIONFS/var/log
tmpfs 1.0G 16K 1.0G 1% /tmp
udev 20M 380K 20M 2% /dev
tmpfs 1.0G 4.0K 1.0G 1% /dev/shm
root@Microknoppix:~# id
uid=0(root) gid=0(root) groups=0(root)

Thank you

[devils casper]

You haven't mounted NTFS and ext3 partitions. Mount those partitions and execute fdisk -l command again.

Mount NTFS and ext3 Partitions, copy data from NTFS and paste in ext3. Does throw any error, permission problem?

[aldretemichel]

You haven't mounted NTFS and ext3 partitions. Mount those partitions and execute fdisk -l command again.

Mount NTFS and ext3 Partitions, copy data from NTFS and paste in ext3. Does throw any error, permission problem?

Whenever i try to mount either of the NTFS partitions i get this message.

root@Microknoppix:~# sudo mount /media/sda1
ntfs-3g-mount: mount failed: Device or resource busy
root@Microknoppix:~# sudo mount /media/sda2
ntfs-3g-mount: mount failed: Device or resource busy

And with the ext3 partition i get this other message.

root@Microknoppix:~# sudo mount /media/sdb1
mount: /dev/sdb1 already mounted or /media/sdb1 busy
mount: according to mtab, /dev/sdb1 is already mounted on /media/sdb1

[devils casper]

Post the output of df -h command here.

Try this

cd /media
mkdir sda1 sda2 sdb1
umount /dev/sda1
mount   -t   ntfs-3g   /dev/sda1  /media/sda1  -o  defaults,umask=0
 
umount /dev/sda2
mount   -t   ntfs-3g   /dev/sda2  /media/sda2  -o  defaults,umask=0

umount /dev/sdb1
mount   -t   ext3   /dev/sdb1  /media/sdb1

[aldretemichel]

Post the output of df -h command here.

Try this

cd /media
mkdir sda1 sda2 sdb1
umount /dev/sda1
mount   -t   ntfs-3g   /dev/sda1  /media/sda1  -o  defaults,umask=0
 
umount /dev/sda2
mount   -t   ntfs-3g   /dev/sda2  /media/sda2  -o  defaults,umask=0

umount /dev/sdb1
mount   -t   ext3   /dev/sdb1  /media/sdb1

This is the output

root@Microknoppix:/home/knoppix# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sr0 689M 689M 0 100% /mnt-system
tmpfs 1.0G 19M 1006M 2% /ramdisk
/dev/cloop 1.9G 1.9G 0 100% /KNOPPIX
unionfs 1.0G 19M 1006M 2% /UNIONFS
unionfs 1.0G 19M 1006M 2% /home
tmpfs 10M 80K 10M 1% /UNIONFS/var/run
tmpfs 10M 0 10M 0% /UNIONFS/var/lock
tmpfs 100M 192K 100M 1% /UNIONFS/var/log
tmpfs 1.0G 20K 1.0G 1% /tmp
udev 20M 380K 20M 2% /dev
tmpfs 1.0G 4.0K 1.0G 1% /dev/shm
/dev/sdb1 459G 199M 435G 1% /media/sdb1
/dev/sda3 19G 52K 19G 1% /media/sda3
/dev/sda2 318G 189G 130G 60% /media/sda2
/dev/sda1 128G 106G 23G 83% /media/sda1

[aldretemichel]

So here is what happened after trying what you adviced me to do.

root@Microknoppix:~# cd /media
root@Microknoppix:/media# mkdir sda1 sda2 sdb1
mkdir: cannot create directory `sda1': File exists
mkdir: cannot create directory `sda2': File exists
mkdir: cannot create directory `sdb1': File exists
root@Microknoppix:/media# umount /dev/sda1
root@Microknoppix:/media# mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 /media/sda1 -o defaults,umask=0
root@Microknoppix:/media# umount /dev/sda2
root@Microknoppix:/media# mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda2 /media/sda2 -o defaults,umask=0
root@Microknoppix:/media# umount /dev/sdb1
root@Microknoppix:/media# mount -t ext3 /dev/sdb1 /media/sdb1
root@Microknoppix:/media# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sr0 689M 689M 0 100% /mnt-system
tmpfs 1.0G 28M 997M 3% /ramdisk
/dev/cloop 1.9G 1.9G 0 100% /KNOPPIX
unionfs 1.0G 28M 997M 3% /UNIONFS
unionfs 1.0G 28M 997M 3% /home
tmpfs 10M 76K 10M 1% /UNIONFS/var/run
tmpfs 10M 0 10M 0% /UNIONFS/var/lock
tmpfs 100M 192K 100M 1% /UNIONFS/var/log
tmpfs 1.0G 20K 1.0G 1% /tmp
udev 20M 380K 20M 2% /dev
tmpfs 1.0G 4.0K 1.0G 1% /dev/shm
/dev/sda3 19G 52K 19G 1% /media/sda3
/dev/sda1 128G 106G 23G 83% /media/sda1
/dev/sda2 318G 189G 130G 60% /media/sda2
/dev/sdb1 459G 199M 435G 1% /media/sdb1

[devils casper]

All partitions have been mounted correctly. Have you tried to move files from NTFS to ext3 partition now?

[aldretemichel]

All partitions have been mounted correctly. Have you tried to move files from NTFS to ext3 partition now?

Hi,

I finally got to copy files from one drive to the other, the issue was on the PCMan File Manager, i'm not sure wether it's an issue in Knoppix 6.2 but every time i did it through the File Manager the window bursted or exploded (dragging files from one window to the other), however if i do it through the root shell via command mode i can get it done, no problem. So yes I finally succeeded.

Thanks a lot devils casper for all your help.