Ubuntu :: Computer Recovery Usb Drive Recommendations?
Jan 24, 2011
I have an old 160 GB HD I want to use as a bootable drive for the purpose of fixing computers and recovering lost files. I'm no computer wiz but I have fixed a few peoples PC's at chruch so I have become the defacto computer fixer uper. Many of you can probably associate with this. As soon as you help one person in a group with a computer suddenly EVRYONE needs help. But I enjoy it so anyway.. back to the topic.
Tools I normally use. Clonzilla: I like to Image a drive before I mess with it that way I can always go back to the original state encase I do something risky and make things worse. Hasn't happened yet but the day I don't do an image will be the day I kill somebody's file system and have to do a recovery.....
XP CD: Use it only for fixmbr and fixboot. I haven't ran into much file recovery yet but I've used a few linux file carvers before so something with this ability is a must. *Bit for Bit forensic style imaging- don't want to loose 'blank' sectors encase I need to do some file carving.
*Used space imaging - so I could if I had to image someones drive and put it on a smaller one if need be. This would probably have to be done with something with decent error handling like ddrecover or dd_recover. I cant remember which I used but it was great getting an OS off of a bad drive. But I put it on a larger one, so is there a way to image a drive and put it on a smaller one given the USED space from the original doesn't exceed the size of the new drive?
*Windows fixmbr- does linux have a tool to fix windows MBR?
*Windows fixboot - this is less likely to have a linux version but maybe you guys know of something?
*File recovery tools - File carving obviously, but I'd also like something that can find recently deleted files from the master file list without going threw the carving process.
*file system tools - gparted along with some tools to repair corrupted file systems, mostly windows but who knows when I'll need to fix ext3-4 systems for my machines.
*Virus scanners capable of scanning for viruses on a mounted windows drive.
*regedit tools - just encase I want to really dork someones machine up , j/k I'm laking in this area but again I can learn and I always have an image to go back to.
*any other tools I may need you guys can think of that may be of use for these type of things.
I've looked at SystemResueCD, Trinity Rescue Kit, and at this moment the best looking one is ubuntu rescue remix. I am willing to install additional tools if need be. It also needs to be able to run on a larg array of computer hardware, as well as very, very old computers... (I know I want my cake and eat it too .. but so far with my limited linux experience thats exactly what I get... eventually.) Again this will be put on a 160 GB drive to accommodate HD images so it still needs to be 'relatively' small and will be made into an external USB bootble drive. Short version I want a one stop shop bootable drive to do most common computer repair jobs.
I messed up my Karmic install on my laptop trying to get wireless networking connection to behave better I'm not really sure what I did, but the problem I have is that, though it connects to my wireless network, it does not get a route to it. Any attempt to reach the router with a ping yields a destination unreachable. Trying to fix it in true hack fashion, I tried messing around with the static routes. I added an explicit route for my router (route add 192.168.0.1 wlan0) with no avail. I ensured there was a default route to the router which is a gateway outside of my LAN (route add default wlan0 gw 192.168.0.1). I have another route to my LAN network with a gateway of "*". I've done all this but the results are the same.
So, I'm interested in recommendations to fix this. Is there some networking setup/install procedure I can rerun? Does a recovery boot work? Or is it best to go back and reinstall Karmic? Are there other places that you might suggest I look to in order to fix this?
I've been thinking of buying a new internal hard drive, mostly because my 40 GB drive is beginning to get a little crowded. I haven't bought a hard drive in many years, so I don't know what brands are currently reliable. Years ago, I heard that the larger drives were much less reliable, but in recent years I have heard that is no longer true, so that it is cost effective to get a larger drive.
Could I please have some recommendations for Data Recovery of a Formatted Drive. There are so many choices out there that I don't know which one I wanna use.
A few days ago I began to get messages about my hard drive running out of space, and while I tried to clear out some files to make room I somehow managed to mess something up such that my main login screen appeared with hugely distorted letters and dialog boxes, and it wouldn't let me log in. While this is still the case, I can now log in by booting to recovery mode, selecting the netroot option, doing an "su myusername", and then executing "startx".
While this is a little inconvenient, it does bring up my standard Ubuntu operating environment and I now have access to all my files, email, internet, etc. There are still a few miscellaneous things that are messed up, however, and I don't yet know how to fix themIn particular:a) I can't print. I tried running the printer configuration tool from the System->Administration menu, but there's no "New Printer" icon. Alsowhile trying to get it working, I managed to generate a "The cups scheduler is not running" error message.b) I can't mount a USB drive. Every time I plug one in, I get an error message that says "Unable to mount drive, not authorized."c) Finally, there's the basic problem of still not being able to login without going thru my recovery mode workaround.I suspect all these problems are related, though I'd be happy to fix them one at a time if that's what it takes.
I'm running 10.04 LTS (64 bit) During a recent attempt at dual booting Windows 7, the Windows installer made a boot partition on the wrong drive, formatting the drive, and therefore destroying all my data.
The original partition was NTFS, and the new (unwanted partition) is NTFS.
Is there something in Linux I can do to recover the data that was there, or am I going to have to install Windows on yet another drive and use some Windows tools?
The data on this drive is extraordinarily important, containing ten years of digital photos, my source codes, and musical compositions (protools sessions etc).
I've been using ubuntu about a year, so I have a fair amount of experience with it. Today I was trying to install ubuntu on my new laptop, which doesn't have an optical drive. I don't have a usb stick, so I attempted to partition my external hard drive. I stupidly clicked "erase disk" on startup disk creator and erased the entire drive instead of the partition. I want to get back the files I had on this external. I searched and managed to find that people had been successful with testdisk. when I choose to analyse, it only finds the partition I created for the live cd.
When I choose advanced, I can find my older partition (FAT32) but when I choose to undelete I get: Code: No file found, filesystem seems damaged.
When I choose boot I get: Code: Boot sector Bad Backup boot sector Bad Sectors are identical.
A valid FAT Boot sector must be present in order to access. Any data; even if the partition is not bootable. I searched but I couldn't find anyone receiving this error message or how to deal with it. So I tried using photorec. Photorec is recovering all of my documents currently but without the filenames and file structure, it's more or less worthless.
The other day one of my hard drives on my windows system decided to stop working. Not entirely sure what happened, but it seemed that it just erased its partition header, although I wasn't able to recover it.
Anyway, I successfully got an image of the drive using GNU_ddrescue (yay!), and I'm currently salvaging what CAN be salvaged with foremost.
way to get EVERYTHING off of the drive? I mean, it seems that it's all intact (since foremost is finding so much stuff).
I've tried mounting the partition, but it's not working. (I'd post the output from the terminal, but the forum thinks there is/are URL(s) in it....)
I'm having an issue with LVM on an external USB drive. When booting, the system drops into a recovery console if the external drive is not powered on because it cannot find the volume group and members. The setup is one system drive with fedora 12 installed, one internal data drive; LVM volume group vg1 with 5 partitions and one external backup drive LVM volume group vg2 with 5 partitions. Both the data drive and external backup are the same size and identical layout.
I use an rsync script that I wrote to execute backups (mirroring actually). fstab is set 'noauto' on the external partitions. I am new to LVM and I'm stumped as how to make the system 'ignore' the external drive at boot, if not powered on.
I have a new HP ML150 G6 Server. I had some trouble getting CentOS to recognise the RAID array, but with some help from a LQ user, I got it sorted :-)Now I need to make an exact copy of the system. Normally I would use Acronis Echo Workstation, or the newer Acronis Backup and Recovery 10. However, this software doesn't recognise the RAID array eitherAcronis tell me that they can't help as HP won't supply the source code for the driver, and a quick phone call to HP Support confirms this.So, finally you might say, I come to my question: Is there a Linux based tool that can perform the same action as Acronis? Or... does anyone know of alternative software that would do the trick
I accidentally formatted a 2TB drive of mine (big oops), but have recovered 2 of the 3 partitions using testdisk. My third partition is a LUKS encrypted partition. Testdisk managed to recover a piece of it, but it won't mount as most of it is unallocated. The partition originally occupied all space from sector 2,930,272,065 to the end of the disk -- sector 3,907,024,064. That is about 473 GBs. Currently, the partition only uses space from sector 2,930,272,065 to 2,930,288,129, about 7.84 MB.
The rest of the space is unallocated. Now what I need to do, is to expand the partition so that it occupies all the space that it used to. How would I do this? I cannot resize the partition, cause it would try to recreate the filesystem AFAIK and I don't want that, as it will fry my data. My data is not terribly important, but I would rather have it then not. I attached a screenie of kpartitionmanager. The partition in question is /dev/sdb2.
I tried unsuccessfully to install what I thought was windows in a virtualbox. After a ton of reading, I realized I don't actually have windows, but the Toshiba recovery discs that have windows on them. I was initially able to run Mint within Windows, but what I would rather do until I can buy windows (bleh) is dual boot. Will this recovery software allow me to partition the hard drive?
I have Fedora Core 4 PPTP server (poptop) that died (motherboard). I am setting up a replacement system but need to get the data off of the drive from the dead FC4 system. They are just plain text config files. So I removed the drive and mounted it to another system using a USB enclosure. But I can't mount of the root partition, only the boot partition. I have done some Googling and see that the reason is that the / partition is an LVM format. But of course the replacement system already has a /dev/logvol..... type of partition defined. So how can I mount the LVM partition from the dead system on the new system to get the data? Understanding this will be valuable for similar situations in the future.
I have an hp laptop with 2 hdd slots, both are sata. it came with a 320gb hdd with vista ultimate 64. i added another 320gb hard drive to my laptop and installed kubuntu on the second hard drive. Since vista was my primary hard drive, parts of grub were installed on it i.e. stage 1.5. And the rest was installed on the kubuntu hard drive. Because of that neither os would boot independently of one another.
I eventually got tired of kubuntu and in wanted to uninstall it. I formatted that disk. Now vista gave me grub errors, like I knew it would.I was going to fix the vista boot sector and mbr by running bootrec.exe off of the vista disc. But since I have an hp laptop, hp doesnt provide a recovery disc with just vista, it is an install of the factory image of the os plus software and therefore doesnt have the utilities I need to fix my problem.I ended up navigating to some sort of command line in the windows recovery environment and tried running it there, but no luck.
I tried navigating in the hp recovery environment, and accidently had vista start to reinstall itself on the drive, and actually I did that 3-4 times, each of which I stopped the recovery early on, within 30 seconds, but it had managed to mess up my partition table. I was wondering if there is some utilities in linux/ windows that will help me restore the partitions back the way they should be? I have done a data recovery with get data back for ntfs, and was pretty successful getting some stuff back, figures since the mft was screwed up.
So first of all I want to make an exact clone of the hard drive. Something like dd but just make an image file for now. Since there are no partitions on the drive I dont think I can use partimage, or drive image xml and I wonder if clonezilla will work. And I dont know how to test it without have to reload the image and wiping the drive in the process. I have imaged the drive with get data back but it does me no good cause I cannot restore that image back to the drive, or at least dont think I can.
Second I would like to see if I can recover the partition table , or mft that was over written. Here is a list of programs I can use for imaging or recovering. [URL]Third, since I have 2 320gb hard drives, one that is corrupted, and one that I took kubuntu off of and loaded vista with the recovery disks. Can I take the mbr, and partition table, or boot sector off of the working vista and move it to the broken 320 and fix it that way?
Recently I built a web server for my clients to host in house. After talking with the web developer they informed me that i needed a CentOS computer with Drupal for them to design the website. This is my first Linux install and after spending hours upon hours configuring the server with FTP, SSH, and configuring our DD-WRT router with proper port forwarding we turned it over to the web designers to start work on the website.
A month goes by and the website is almost done, at this point we go to make a full backup of the hard drive. Due to a hardware problem it fried the circuit board of the hard drive. After attempting to recover the files myself we opted to send it to a HD data recovery facility to recover the information. We have received back a DVD containing the 2GB's worth of data from the CentOS hard drive. It contained 2 folders one for each of the partitions. I can view and see all the files on my windows machine and it appears that all of the data was recovered successfully. I harbored some hope that i could simply reinstall CentOS with the same account information and then just drop the recovered files on top of the new installation and have it start working.
I then reinstalled CentOS on another hard drive in the same computer and used the same credentials for installation. After i successfully booting into CentOS i turned off the machine and connected the hard drive it to my Windows bench machine. After booting into Windows i was unable to browse the hard drive. After doing more research and installing Ext2fsd i was able to see the 2 partitions CentOS had just created, but only able to access the Boot partition. After more research i discovered the default installation of CentOS creates a Raw file type for the 2nd partition and that is why i am having issues reading it inside of Windows.
I then downloaded a copy of Knoppix to see if this would allow me to write the old files over the new ones. After booting up the CD i could only browse to the /boot drive(and im not even sure if this is Knoppix's Virtual /boot or my CentOS /boot).
My question is what would be the best steps to recovery for my scenario? Can the files be placed to the drive and have everything restored? Is the only way to recovery thru reinstalling all applications and reconfiguring from scratch? How difficult is Drupal DB to recover in this type of scenario?
Mac Hard Drive Data Recovery is needed when your disks are not spinning up, hard drive unmountable, killed a hard drive without backing up, or if you have experienced a hard drive crash.
Since Ubuntu is smaller than Windows, will it entirely delete Windows to install Ubuntu? The Ubuntu installation won't affect the recovery drive, right?
I had a corrupted superblock in my RAID boot drive (/dev/md0), which I fixed with fsck in Recovery Mode.However, after rebooting, the same boot-up problem (hanging for hours) persists.When I re-enter Recovery Mode to examine the boot drive, I found its superblock was corrupted again (which I fixed again using fsck).Is there a proper reboot procedure which is gentle on the boot drive, such that it doesn't corrupt it? Or, is something else amiss
I had a corrupted superblock in my RAID boot drive (/dev/md0), which I fixed with fsck in Recovery Mode.
However, after rebooting, the same boot-up problem (hanging for hours) persists. When I re-enter Recovery Mode to examine the boot drive, I found its superblock was corrupted again (which I fixed again using fsck).
Is there a proper reboot procedure which is gentle on the boot drive, such that it doesn't corrupt it? Or, is something else amiss?
is it possible to use a Windows-based recovery partition on a dual-boot computer to overwrite the Ubuntu partition and remove the GRUB loader? For instance, if you booted up your computer, accessed the hidden recovery partition and used it to reset the computer to it's factory default settings, would that effectively remove the Ubuntu partition and the GRUB loader? Would a completely new installation of Windows overwrite/uninstall Ubuntu and GRUB automatically?
I would like to build an oem style install partions that is bootable with menu to choose if I want to run install or boot already installed system. I would like to include current source packages on the same dive so if I don't have internet access at time of install, can can still install what I need.I know with Windows Vista and Windows 7, you can get this but how can I do this with Debian?
I've got a, as it seems to me, strange problem.I've inadvertently deleted my user from the group admin so I'm in the same situation of a lot of other users (read a lot of messages about it).My problem is that when restarted in recovery mode there is no way I can choose the 'drop to the root shell' or similar in the menu.The menu appears for a second and then I've got an empty screen. If I press a key I've been requested for a username and password that of course is not what I need.
I'm trying to install Ubuntu on old desktops without proper optical drives (they half work, its hit and miss) and the BIOS does not allow booting from the USB. Can I yank the HDD out, install Ubuntu (with bootloader) on it using it as an external drive on another computer and then plug it back in?
My desktop computer that i dont use very often, that runs Windows XP, but im trying to install ubuntu 9.10 on it from an old CD i have but the drive wont work. It doesn't work with anything!
So heres what ive found: In my my computer area it shows that there is a "DVD/CD-RW Drive (D: )" and a "CD Drive (E: )" and when i click on the E drive it says to insert a disk into the drive and when i click on drive D it opens to a blank page. Also when i click eject on E nothing happens but when i click it on D the drive opens.
Ive already said this, but when i put a disc in it nothing happens. It doesnt matter what i put in it either, when i put something in the light saying its working blinks a few times then stops and nothing else happens.
I dont have any internet on the desktop. And ive been having this problem on & off since the computer was givin to me, but its never not worked for this long.
So I tried to install Ubuntu on my Acer Aspire ASE380 desktop, and I think during the partition portion. I think I messed up the hard drive.
Now my computer won't recognize my hard drive. I've tried using the acer repair disks I made, I tried unplugging and checking all the cords and lines, I tired flashing the BIOS, I've tried using other boot disks like Ultimate boot CD, and Acer support is no help either.
I really don't know what to do now. It shows nothing in the boot setup or the BIOS set up. I've also tired the ALT - F10 for acer computers to enter and repair partition and nothing.
I just want to get this thing up and running. I'm tempted to just buy a new hard drive.
I installed 9.04 on both two computers -- on an old PIII 667 box and on a dual core Intel (Dell).
DVDs play on the old PIII (jerky to be sure, but it's an old box with only 512 MB memory).
But the dual-core Intel does not even recognize that there is a DVD in the drive, so nothing happens after the disk is inserted and the drive activity light stops flashing. Nothing.
When we look in "Places" to see what drives appear on the Dell the hard drive icon shows up as does the optical drive icon. But clicking on that optical drive icon brings up a message that there is no media in the drive.
On the other hand, on the old PIII the DVD shows up in "Places" along side the hard drive and optical drive icons. Clicking on the DVD icon launches Movie Player (Totem) and the DVD plays.
I don't even know where to begin trouble-shooting this one so that the dual-core Dell will recognize that there is a disk in the drive and then play DVDs.
We do have libdvdcss2 on both computers.
One other item worth noting... Previously the Dell had SuSE Linux 11.1, and it did play DVDs without problem.
Is there an output file from the non-responding computer I can post to this list that would help identify what's preventing a DVD from being seen?
I am having trouble trying to use a 1.44 MB floppy drive on my computer. I have tried to mount the drive on my computer, but all I get is the following message:
Unable to mount location No media in the drive
One post mentioned that if I were to type "id" in a terminal, the floppy would be recognized as "25(floppy)". I tried that, but "25(floppy)" didn't come up.
Also, when I tried using KFloppy to format a floppy disk, I got the following message:
Internal error: device not clearly defined
However, when I used the 'lsmod' and "cat /etc/fstab" commands, they strangely seem to recognize that my computer has a floppy.
I am attaching documentation to this post for analysis. This documentation includes information about a failed attempt to format a disk using Disk Utility. Also, I am using Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) as my operating system.
My friend gave me his old computer but he kept the hard drive, I have a computer with a 200 gb hard drive. could I partition the hard drive and have the computer my friend gave me access the other partition without having to take the hard drive out and connect it to the other computer?
I have Ubuntu installed on a separate drive. Dual boot with win XP. It was working out fine..Then, and I don't remember exactly when, the boot process was interrupted saying Drive 2 not found..the Ubuntu drive. So I press F2 and enter BIOS setup. I have to cycle through the drives to #2, select 'on', then leave BIOS setup. OK so far..I can confuse myself.. Anyhow, my computer will then continue to the Dual boot screenWindows will load fine, but Ubuntu goes to a command line screen for grub>.When I push 'Esc' I go to a screen with several commands listed, most of which return me to the grub> prompt..the 'reboot' command sends me back through the Bios process, the 'halt' command shuts down the computer. Grub> wants something and I don't know what it is. Do you think I'll have to reinstall? Bad hard drive?I'd like to get my Ubuntu back really just getting to get a feel for the system.
