Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

[tireguy]

I am trying to transfer files from a computer whr windows crashed. The files are good, but I can't figure out how to connect the computer running puppy linux with the other computer running Windows XP. I can't figure out how to transfer files.

[Makoto]

Why not use a Puppy CD in the crashed XP system, boot with puppy pfix=ram, then plug in a USB drive and copy the files to that?

[Flash]

Connecting two computers together is tricky no matter how you do it. That's why I don't bother. It's much easier to use Makoto's solution and transfer the files to a USB drive.

If you simply must connect the computers, first boot Puppy in both. How much RAM do they have?

[prehistoric]

If you have no problem booting Puppy on that crashed machine, the above solutions are quick and easy.

Here is my ultimate solution for transferring files from machines where not only has Windoze crashed, but the hardware may be dead: get an external drive case or hard drive dock. (I have both.)

Then, you only need a screwdriver, and a few minutes, to remove the drive with valuable data from the bad machine. With modern large-capacity drives, it takes less time to pull the drive than it does to copy the contents. With SATA drives, you simply unplug, copy and plug in again. With IDE drives set up as "master" devices, (the most common case,) this is also true. If the hard disk is set as a "slave" device, you may have to move a jumper on the back. (Remember to restore this to original position when you put the drive back.) Nothing else in the suspect machine has to be changed.

Most people have an aversion to going inside a machine, when you're troubleshooting you need to get over this. The advantage of this approach is that, no matter what horrible thing may be wrong with the suspect machine, any surviving data will be beyond the reach of flaky hardware or software.

[Flash]

prehistoric, have you run across a case where the MBR on the disk was corrupted so that the partition data was lost? If so, how did you locate files to be saved? What I'm trying to find out is, is dd the only solution, or is there a simpler way? Is there a program that will look at a hard disk and rebuild its partition data?

[deltaflyer]

[prehistoric]

Flash,

If you are simply trying to recover a clobbered partition table, this is an old mini-How-To covering the issue. I've done this in ages past, but not recently.

The specific tool you want, if you don't have a good way to find the start of the partition, is gpart. Modern file systems write file system information in a number of "superblocks" spaced through the file system. This will scan for these, and reconstruct each partition table entry from the partition itself. It isn't foolproof, but I've had success with it. Here's another article on the subject.

When the hardware has been flaky, there are likely to be errors in a number of places, not just in the MBR. Part of the problem is solved if you move a good drive to an external box. If the drive itself has problems, you may still need to copy data off it using dd-rescue, which will continue to copy in the presence of errors which stop dd. Here's another tutorial. I've been down this route, and recovered both partition tables and specific files from a damaged drive.

The drive itself became reliable again after I did a low-level format. (This no longer does what the name once implied, that now requires something like a factory jig with a laser interferometer, but, where this option is available with stand-alone tools from the manufacturer, it will rebuild structures which do not depend on the file systems seen at the OS level. These may not work under a normal OS.) I've never had to go to the extreme of freezing a disk drive, and I doubt that this still does what it once did.

Naturally, there are also commercial tools and services available, for a price.

Added: good suggestion deltaflyer. I've got one around somewhere. Our posts overlapped.

[Flash]

Thanks to both of you.

[racepres]