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Post by alexham36 on Dec 20, 2011 16:57:38 GMT
Hi, Mikkh,
I bought a 8GB USB stick and installed Puppy onto it. It would not boot and the blurb did not tell me much - I am afraid Linux never does. I can still run Puppy from a CD and save data to to original, smaller USB, but I cannot boot WinSP on my main IDE 250GB HD. I can boot Win7 on the 160GB SATA drive.
I don't know what Puppy has done during installation. My guess is that it changed the MBR, but that is only a guess. I don't really know.
Any suggestions?
Thanks,
Alex
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Post by alexham36 on Dec 20, 2011 17:14:30 GMT
Further to the earlier message, when I look at the HDs and partitions from Win7 it shows HD Q: as not accessible and no free space on it. That is my 250GB IDE drive.
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Post by mikkh on Dec 20, 2011 18:31:30 GMT
www.pendrivelinux.com/put-lucid-puppy-on-usb-flash-drive-from-windows/A hard drive showing as some random letter and not accessible is mostly because Windows no longer recognises it as a valid hard drive and has just moved it to the next available slot - Q in your case, because you probably have one of those those multi card reader devices. Puppy gives reams of info usually, which is why I recommended it. An install to a USB device has no need to touch the MBR and will only work if your PC supports USB booting
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Post by alexham36 on Dec 20, 2011 19:37:42 GMT
Thanks Mikkh, but I am not trying to repair Puppy, but to recover the use of my main drive and Windows SP with all my personal data going back at least 5 years.
Any suggestions on how to achieve that?
Thanks,
Alex
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Post by mikkh on Dec 21, 2011 0:39:08 GMT
You mean XP? Puppy is what I use to retrieve data from failing/faulty hard drives If Puppy can't read it, then you got problems
With that drive attached and Puppy loaded from CD you should see icons along the bottom of the desktop SDA1 = Windows C drive - assuming no other hard drives are attached, otherwise it could be SDB1 View the files you can tell which is XP because it has Documents and Settings folder, Windows 7 doesn't
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Post by alexham36 on Dec 21, 2011 1:52:13 GMT
Mikkh,
Puppy is running OK from a CD with USB stick to save data, but it cannot read the HD on which I have WindowsSP. I only reads SATA HD with Windows7.
So, what kind of problem do you think I have?
Thanks,
Alex
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Post by mikkh on Dec 21, 2011 12:14:49 GMT
Hard drives sometimes fail, nothing you can do about that apart from keep regular back-ups. I don't know which sequence of events you went through while trying to install Puppy, but you could have overwritten the partition table making it appear unformatted and empty to all operating systems. There are pretty dire warnings when doing this, so it shouldn't have happened and the only program I know which can recover from that is Acronis hard drive manager or possibly Paragons equivalent who offer a free version on their site www.paragon-software.com/home/br-free/
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Post by alexham36 on Dec 21, 2011 13:15:31 GMT
Thank you Mikkh. I will download Paragon tonight and report back on the outcome.
Alex
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Post by alexham36 on Dec 21, 2011 13:50:21 GMT
Mikkh, Can you be more specific? What exactly do I download from the Paragon website. Backup & Recovery? or Rescue Kit? My bet is Rescue Kit, but I have to register with Facebook so I am reluctant if this is not what I want.
Thanks,
Alex
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Post by alexham36 on Dec 21, 2011 18:03:26 GMT
Mikkh, I tried Paragon website and downloaded Backup & Recovery and having used up 100MB I realized that it was not what I wanted, so I downloaded Rescue Kit, but I could not use it. Despite having "registered" on Facebook it did not send me the key.
So, I opted for the drastic measures and re-installed Win XP on that drive. It is working perfectly, so it was Puppy (my finger trouble probably) that over-wrote the partition table.
I have backed up address book, correspondence and pictures, so this was a minor inconvenience and a lesson for the future.
Next time I fiddle around with any Linux O/S, my HDs will be unplugged!!! I still have Puppy working off the CD and if the CD is not in the drive the system defaults to Win XP.
I am not too impressed with Win7. I prefer XP if I have to use Windows, but I really like the simplicity of Puppy.
I take it that you will be keeping vigil over the holidays, so that I can be sure of immediate assistance when I press the wrong button!!!
Thanks again and have a very Merry Christmas,
Alex
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