Unallocated Partition Help

[b3n87]

Hello, my friend has recently decided to try Ubuntu! He has an extra hard drive which has all his music on it. The problem is Windows did not format the hard drive at all, so in GNOME Partition Editor is calling it unallocated.

Is there a way we can mount it so we can copy all the music off it onto the Ubuntu desktop?

the hard drive (i think) its located at /dev/sdb, but its not there if you navigate through the file system to find it?

Kind regards

[TeoBigusGeekus]

How can an unformatted drive contain any kind of data?

[b3n87]

I have no idea, according to the Partition Editor its "unallocated" but it does have Music and data on it.

Shall i post some command outputs for more information?

[TeoBigusGeekus]

Yes please!!!

[b3n87]

what commands shall i use?

[b3n87]

Disk /dev/sda: 163.9 GB, 163928604672 bytes
161 heads, 15 sectors/track, 132576 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 2415 * 512 = 1236480 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000001

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 111154 134217727+ 4 FAT16 <32M

Disk /dev/sda1: 137.4 GB, 137438952960 bytes
161 heads, 15 sectors/track, 111153 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 2415 * 512 = 1236480 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000001

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1p1 * 1 111154 134217727+ 4 FAT16 <32M

Disk /dev/sdb: 40.0 GB, 40020664320 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4865 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x25352534

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 4660 37431418+ 83 Linux
/dev/sdb2 4661 4865 1646662+ 5 Extended
/dev/sdb5 4661 4865 1646631 82 Linux

[nibsa1242]

I was trying to help him in IRC chat. At that time I had him pastebin a sudo fdisk -l the results follow or you can see http://paste.ubuntu-nl.org/64767/.

Disk /dev/sda: 40.0 GB, 40020664320 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4865 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x25352534

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 4660 37431418+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 4661 4865 1646662+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 4661 4865 1646631 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Disk /dev/sdb: 163.9 GB, 163928604672 bytes
161 heads, 15 sectors/track, 132576 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 2415 * 512 = 1236480 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000001

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 111154 134217727+ 4 FAT16 <32M

Disk /dev/sdb1: 137.4 GB, 137438952960 bytes
161 heads, 15 sectors/track, 111153 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 2415 * 512 = 1236480 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000001

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1p1 * 1 111154 134217727+ 4 FAT16 <32M



According to http://www-personal.umich.edu/~hnara...ive-linux.html if one has a partition named /dev/sdxp1 that partition does not have a node. This is sometimes done by drive manufacturers / computer OEMs. I can not seem to find a single instance of anyone who had a drive like this that Linux was happy reading.

The best way to get the data off of the disk is probably to take the second hard disk with the media files on it, and connect it to a computer running Windows. Hopefully, the Windows computer will be able to read the drive. Then the files can be copied off. Once the files are backed up, you should use Linux to format the drive so Linux can understand it.

[TeoBigusGeekus]

What drives do you see when you go to /media?

[b3n87]

Hi guys, thanks for your help.
in the folder "media" he has the following folders

cdrom cdrom0 floppy floppy0


none of which is the second hard drive :/

Im not sure why, but windows has allowed him to use the drive unformatted. hmmmm

[b3n87]

hello again, i think he's gonna buy this

SATA 2 USB Cable

Copy the files to a vista laptop, format the hard drive then copy the files back for Ubuntu to read. Does ubuntu have a problem with the way Vista formats a hard-drive, new version of NTFS or anything silly like that? Or I could use the Ubuntu live CD with the GNOME Partition Editor?