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We are trying to get files off someone's damaged laptop SATA drive.  XP 
starts to boot but is missing files so hopefully only the system area is 
damaged.  She has family photos on there without any backup elsewhere.

Ubuntu 5.10 live CD was flummoxed by the drive, which it decided was scsi. 
The drive is post 2005.  Other people also tried to access SATA disks with 
5.10 for file recovery, and failed.  Supposedly 6.10 can handle it.  We 
don't have broadband.  It took me days to figure out how to mount a hard 
disk with Ubuntu (sudo mount /dev/hdc /mnt - there is no root password so 
you cannot shell to root).  Someone is bringing us Knoppix live CD - maybe 
he knows the root password or workaround.

The laptop has no floppy drive or serial or parallel port (for zip 100).

I have instructions for making an iso file image (mkisofs -o /tmp/file.iso 
/mnt if you have BL mounted on /mnt) and copying a CD to an iso image with 
dd (dd if=/dev/cdrom of=/cd.is09) and recording an iso image of universal 
boot cd (cdrecord -data ubc.iso) but the process of making a boot CD 
(boot-disk-HOWTO) involves lilo and looks complex.

Can I compile an SATA kernel model from recent source code to work with BL 
and 2.4.31?  Some features require 2.6.16 kernel or it will hang. '2.4 and 
earlier kernels are now a thing of the past'.  Different SATA drives 
require different drivers.  They may all require 2.6.

I read about SATA drives.  They have fewer wires.

Universal boot cd is another option (big download) and contains a free DOS 
ntfs reader.  I presume if you can read you can also copy.

http://www.ntfs.com has a free trial version of a bootable CD (or USB 
stick) that includes the free DOS ntfs reader (only 4MB zip file).

Do these recognize SATA drives?

------------------------

Another approach - USB to SATA adaptor

Two people offered to lend us one of these.

$20 for one model that works with either size SATA disk and also supports 
zip, CD, DVD and IDE drives.  Makes anything into a a USB 2.0 external 
drive.  Linux kernel 2.4.X.  64MB RAM (why?).  Win98SE needs a driver.

Another is $15 without power supply, $25 with.
'No driver is needed for Windows ME....Vista or Linux' only Win98SE.

Is this a USB storage device?   If so, we could plug it into BL3 running a 
2.4 kernel, and insmod ntfs.o.

Slackware 11 has 2.4.33 kernel so probably no SATA support.
lilo -M looks for active (bootable) partitions to install to.
I will try plain lilo -v to install to the main mbr.

Sindi

keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org