Finding "C" Drive

[Gertiee]

Hi I am a neebie to LInux. I have built and repaired computers using windows for many years. My question is a navigation one. Problem: I have a hard drive that is corrupt. I believe it is because of virus. I cannot access the drive. I then installed Linux from a CD and that works fine. My question is how do i navigate on the linux program to access and view my files on the C drive? thanks so much

[Cabhan]

In Linux, we do not have separate drives. Under Windows, you have your main hard drive at C:\, your floppy drive at A:\, your CD drive at E:\, etc. Under Linux, we have a single filesystem tree, where certain directories correspond to certain peripherals. The process of connecting a peripheral to the tree is called "mounting".

The start of the filesystem tree is the / directory, called the root directory. Your home directory is at /home/USER, where USER is your username. Installed programs can be at /bin, /usr/bin, or /usr/local/bin. Peripherals are generally located in either /mnt or /media. For instance, your CD drive might be at /mnt/cdrom.

You can read about the Linux filesystem at:
Filesystem Hierarchy Standard

I hope this helps.

[reed9]

I then installed Linux from a CD and that works fine. My question is how do i navigate on the linux program to access and view my files on the C drive? thanks so much

Can you clarify? If you mean you did a hard drive installation from a CD, then it's possible you formatted your drive.

Please open a terminal and post the output of

sudo fdisk -l

(Note that -l is a lower case L, not a 1.)

[Gertiee]

HI. No I didn't do a hard drive install. The original hard drive has become corrupt due to viruses and I cannot boot from it. I thought if i used linux software i could retrieve the files from the C drive. I think that would work. I just don't know how to navigate using linux software to get to the C drive. Example. In windows i click on my computer and it shows what hard drives are available. Since I don't see a my computer in linux, i don't know how to be able to see my C drive. make sense?? sorry.

[reed9]

Do you have more than one hard drive, or more than one partition? If not, when you open Places->Computer, it will be the only hard drive that shows up, and it will be labeled according to its size. If you have more than one hard drive or partition, and you don't know their approximate sizes, you may just have to poke around to find what you're looking for.

Mounting Windows Partitions in Ubuntu

[sarlacii]

Hey Gertiee... you haven't said which distribution of "Linux" you are trying to use. Depending on the type, there are slightly different ways of getting what you want via the GUI. Let us know... . :o)
For getting at a HDD, I suggest a live-distro like Knoppix (runs from CD). The GUI is easy to follow... just click on the "My Computer" icon and you will see all valid partitions for your drives. Select any one and double-click to automatically mount and open.