Hard drive malfunction?

Recently my PC has been turning off at random times, and I chalked it up to the PSU after reading a few replies to my problem I posted before. A few nights ago my PC stopped even starting properly and wouldn't get past the windows starting up screen.

Now I am running my PC off of an Ubuntu install Cd just so I have access to the internet and etc. But, is there any way for me to read files from an NTFS formatted harddrive with Ubuntu? I have very important school work, and other family members have work related items on this hard drive.

Any help is appreciated~

If it's the power supply then how is it supplying power to the cd drive? Or even getting to the boot record to where it knows you want it to boot from cd?

I don't see why Ubuntu shouldn't be able to read NTFS partitions. You could try a Knoppix boot CD instead, since that flavour of linux is probably more suited to recovery than Ubuntu is straight off the disc - and I know Knoppix will find all your drives including NTFS ones as it starts up, if they're readable :p

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Originally Posted by Moon Rabbits

Now I am running my PC off of an Ubuntu install Cd just so I have access to the internet and etc. But, is there any way for me to read files from an NTFS formatted harddrive with Ubuntu? I have very important school work, and other family members have work related items on this hard drive.

Any help is appreciated~

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The easy way: If you go to the Places menu in Gnome, does it list anything that looks like a hard drive? Check those, it may have been auto-detected and mounted by the CD.

The not easy way: Your hard drive is going to be listed as a device in Linux called something like /dev/hda1, /dev/hda2, /dev/hdb1 /dev/sda1, /dev/sdb1 etc. It will vary depending on your computer. You can mount the NTFS partition read-only in Linux so you can read the files on it.

Do you know how to figure out which device is your hard drive? You can type this at a command line for example:

cat /proc/partitions

It will list all partitions that have been recognized by Linux. It will not tell you which is your NTFS partition, you'll have to figure it out. To do the actual mounting you would do something like:

mkdir /media/win
mount -t ntfs /dev/hdXXX /media/win

Replacing /dev/hdXXX with whatever your NTFS partition is. Then if you browse to /media/win you'll find the files from your NTFS partition.

Thanks, Unne. I had to gain access the 'not-easy way', but I got what I needed. I have a few questions though, like how do I partition my drive from inside Ubuntu (after install)?

The help file says to use the Gnome Partition Editor in System->Administrator, but it isn't there. What can I use to partition my drive in the Ubuntu environment?

EDIT: Nevermind, I figured what I needed out~