One of my dorm neighbors has a 2.5" laptop-size hard drive (it's actually a removable USB, but he took it apart, now it's a laptop hard drive) and it's going bad. He can plug it into his laptop and boot off a floppy, but by doing so he has to remove his original disk, so he doesn't have anything to back up his files to.
Can he connect that 2.5" drive to a desktop? Any connectors needed?....?
I was thinking booting off a Linux install CD, and maybe using ftp to transfer it to my laptop, or a floppy at least. He has 7 gigs worth of documents, notes, pictures, etc.
How can he get his data off that drive? Please help. Any ideas are welcome, he's pretty desperate.
Thanks in advance.
Oh, in case you are wondering, it doesn't work just by plugging it in via USB. We already tried that on everybody's computer on this floor.
ph34r
10-07-2003, 03:37 PM
You can get an adapter for under $20 that will let you add a laptop harddrive to a desktop system - smaller cables for the ide interface, integrated power, etc.
sasKuatch
10-07-2003, 03:47 PM
Ok, so an adapter is required.... Do they make them for plugging in the other way around? 5.25" to 2.5"?
Anyway, can I boot off an install CD and transfer it anywhere? Any input on that?
Thanks for the reply ph34r.
JamminJoeyB
10-07-2003, 03:47 PM
Second option would be knoppix. This assumes you have a nic in both and a network or at least a hub/switch around to connect to. Then you could just mount the drive and copy the data across the network.
I belive to connect 2 computers directly thru cat 5 it would have to be in crossover configuration. Never tried this one myself, I've always had a hub sitting around for just such purposes.
Just thowing out options
sasKuatch
10-07-2003, 04:02 PM
That's what I was thinking. Do you think I can do this with a RedHat 9 install CD? Reason I'm asking is because another neighbor has this, and it would be preferable to downloading Knoppix, which didn't work on my laptop last time I tried.
Again, thanks for the feedback, anything and everything is welcome.
JamminJoeyB
10-07-2003, 04:11 PM
Well Gentoo also makes a live cd version and there is Morphix. Morphix is small in size. Maybe these could get around the problems you had with knoppix. I am not sure an install cd would help, it could.
The problems that I see are:
Being able to load the proper nic module, without this you are dead in the water.
Starting network services.
Satanic Atheist
10-07-2003, 04:14 PM
I belive to connect 2 computers directly thru cat 5 it would have to be in crossover configuration.
You're quite right, but if you don't have a crossover cable, you can get an adapter for a CAT-5 cable (I have one here, came with my broadband kit I'm NEVER giving it up!).
You can also get USB-to-Ethernet convertors, that is if you don't have a network card, but I've had strange results with mine under Linux - it correctly identified it as Belkin, but stuck it under the "Scanner" section of the config! Couldn't change it either! Thank God I keep a healthy supply of NICs around.
If you can't run Knoppix, I'd try another Live CD since the RedHat boot CD is for installing RedHat and I don't think you'd have much success.
Now, you say you have other people on your floor? If this drive is FAT32, fit it to a desktop machine and get the data off with the convertor. If it's a Linux partition, then use Knoppix to get the data off (on the desktop).
At least once the data is safe, you can worry about getting it back onto a drive after. Just get it safe! If you can get hold someone with a CD-burner as well, you could burn the stuff off. Alright, 7 Gb is quite a lot, but 10 discs should do it.
Since it looks like he's going to need a new drive, you could use the adapter again and transfer it. Or transfer it back onto his existing drive.
This is going to be a difficult one for you, and it'll take quite a bit of time, but let us know how you get on. If you have any trouble/problems, well, we're not just Linux users, we're network gurus and hardware junkies as well.
Oh, and getting Knoppix to run without a DHCP server may cost you a lot of time if you plan on networking the data across unless you can set up a quick DHCP server. If you want, I can send you a dhcp.conf file that will save you having to do the configuring.
Good Luck,
James
sasKuatch
10-07-2003, 04:18 PM
You are correct, I do need those things. But aren't those things required to do a network install as well? I've never done that, so I don't know how complete the networking is. I assumed I could ALT+1 into a different terminal after the NIC detection phase and ftp into another box to upload (at least) some files.
thoughts?
sasKuatch
10-07-2003, 04:34 PM
I have a crossover cable.
We DON'T have an adapter unfortunately, so I'll be the one getting creative on this. Everybody else is telling him to take it to the local shop. "There's a bunch of A+ certs there" one guy says. "Kiss your stuff goodbye" I added.
He (with the drive) has a CD burner. I'm checking out Morphix as I write this.
We have a DHCP server, with nobody but the Internet on the other end, so I might very well need your dhcp.conf file. Thank you dearly.
Thank you for all your help so far. I'm going to check out Morphix as as plan B, probably the strongest hope his data has. See how to do networking, etc. Thanks again, I'll keep you all posted and/or beg for help as necessary.
dkeav
10-07-2003, 04:50 PM
i do this all the time with LNX-BBC, and just use samba or scp/sftp to transfer the files, if the head crashes on it i have some tricks to get it working long enought to get some data off of it, but no gurantee's
sasKuatch
10-07-2003, 05:07 PM
Ok, I just downloaded both Morphix and LNX-BBC. I'm curious about bbc, since the site says it has a lot of tools, what can I do with it? (sorry, I don't have a burner, I'll have to wait for the neighbor with the CD burner to come back from class)
I guess I'm asking this because I didn't find anything on their site.
Thanks for pointing me at it, it's a another possibility. You usage of 'ftp' caught my eye and it looks promising.
dkeav
10-07-2003, 05:12 PM
uhh heres what i would do, burn BBC and put it in the guilty laptop, fire it up, mount the drive, and on the recipient computer, have sshd running, login with sftp, and transfer the files you wish to backup, alternativly if you get the desktop adapter, plug the bad hd in, and i like to use dd to create an image of the drive on the good hd, or just copy the whole damn thing, provided you have the extra space
sasKuatch
10-07-2003, 06:22 PM
Thanks, using dd could be very useful.
Satanic Atheist
10-07-2003, 06:29 PM
Keep posting. This could be the fastest recovery in history (and a fully documented way to solve this problem).
I hope you got that dhcpd running OK. Did you get the e-mail?
James
sasKuatch
10-07-2003, 06:31 PM
Nope, didn't get it yet.
BTW, do I need any packages installed for that?
Satanic Atheist
10-07-2003, 07:03 PM
Usually installed as default, so no.
James
sasKuatch
10-07-2003, 10:41 PM
Ok, I got LNX-BBC working, and it sees his data. I have it networked to my laptop, and ftp works, but he has a TON of directories and copying it all would be nearly impossible. Is there any way to copy directories recursively with ftp? I'm not that familiar with it.
He also has an external USB hardrive (like the broken one), but I couldn't get that working, so it's down to the ftp.
PLEASE help me. I'm past the 90th yard line and failure is not an option right now. Thank you very much for your help so far.
sasKuatch
10-08-2003, 09:59 AM
He discovered ncftp while I was messing with USB trying to get his USB external working to put data on there. Well, after the poor guy almost hugged me for joy, I started copying his data onto my laptop. Ncftp is great; it has recursive copy so I could copy a 2gig directory all at once. That was 2 gigs of spreatsheets and data. He wasn't kidding when he said that drive was his life.
Anyway, thanks for all your help, I most likely couldn't have done it without you guys. And Jean Daniel also thanks you.
:)
JamminJoeyB
10-08-2003, 12:02 PM
Gonna bumb this up to the top again. Good to hear you had success. Any chance you could do a brief summary of you actions on everything you used and did? I think that would complete this thread and get the mods to mark it so that people searching for the same type of problem would have a basic how-to.
dkeav
10-08-2003, 01:46 PM
glad to hear, somtimes you dont get so lucky, i learned this the hardway, but i carry two LNX-BBC disks in my wallet at all times
just never know when linux is gonna save your arss :D
sasKuatch
10-08-2003, 03:53 PM
Sure. As dkeav recommended, I downloaded LNX-BBC (linux bootable business card), it's about 50 megs, www.lnx-bbc.org.
I burned the .iso and booted from it, and got lucky enough that it detected most of the hardware, including the network card, etc. At first I wanted to tar some of the directories to make it easier to ftp them over, but it mounts the disks as readonly. And for some reason spell it as discs. Anyway.
I used ncftp, really important, as this let me copy over whole directories to my other computer. Setting up the network is easy, look at the help by typing "help". This gives you a nice ncurses program to replace the man pages they removed. It's much better.
Then, I just logged into my computer with ncftp, and "mput -R" the files. Also check the help for ncftp.
And that's it. Most of the time went into trying to get his external USB drive working, but I abandoned that and chose ftp.
There you have it.
Most imporant point: use the help program.
JockVSJock
12-27-2003, 12:34 PM
Great thread.
The reason I'm commenting on this, is because I am going to try to rescue the data off of my parents W2K box tonight with Linux BBC.
Safe Mode (F8) is not working, so I will try the sftp or scp to move data from one machine to another.
If I do want to try and mount their HD, which is NTFS, is this the command line?
mount -t ntfs /dev/hda1 /mnt/hda1
thanks
sasKuatch
12-27-2003, 02:22 PM
yeah, that should work. if not, try with -t auto
voidinit
12-28-2003, 02:47 AM
If you have a working linux box handy, you can use bare.i, install1.dsk, and install2.dsk to boot the laptop, then use network.dsk to load the driver for the network card. Then you can use ifconfig to configure the network interface for your network, or crossover or whatever, then you can NFS to mount a network volume. Slackware can NFS install, so it has a nfs client on-board it's installation package.
JockVSJock
12-28-2003, 04:37 AM
Field Report:
I tried to use Linux BBC to save data on W2K box. I could not mount my USB 128mb drive to move data. USB is id under /proc/pci and when grepping usb, it was ok, but still could not mount.
I then tried using Knoppix V3.3 to do the save, but for some reason, after mounting whatever drive, I could not see it via the GUI or Konsole. I have no idea what I did wrong here. Tried to do SCP/SFTP but really can't remember those commands. If anyone can post, that would be great.
Wanted to use NC, but was unsure on how to do it.
Also wanted to try SMB, but haven't use it in awhile and wasn't sure how to set it up.
But, I was able to use F8 under W2K and it was ok, but I really wanted to use Linux to save the data.
thanks
sasKuatch
12-28-2003, 07:15 PM
voidinit, I like your sig.
JockVSJock, are you looking in the right place in Knoppix to see it with the gui? I've never used knoppix, so I don't know.
ncftp is just like regular, only with fewer calories:D Seriously though, it's just get -R directorytree to download or put -R otherstuff to upload. The -R option makes it recursive to download a whole directory tree at once.
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