Can't mount harddrive

[Noadi]

Okay so here's the problem: I just bought a new laptop with Windows 7 on it. My eventual plan is to dual boot it with Ubuntu but that's not my problem. I knew my old laptop was nearing it's end and I had recently backed up my files onto an external HD. All but a handful of files I've created since my last backup. To save time I tried just accessing my old laptop via the network and transferring those few files.

Well something messed up and the old laptop crashed and now Ubuntu won't load at all. When I boot it using an old 7.04 live cd (handy and didn't want to burn a new one) I get this error when trying to access the harddrive:

Unable to mount the volume.
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/
sda1, missing codepage or other error in some cases useful info is found in syslog -try dmesg|tail or so

I'm not good with the technical stuff so I have no idea what that means. All I want is to retrieve some photos, couple text documents, and a couple videos I shot for my business. Any way to do this I would appreciate.

[darolu]

Boot from the LiveCD; open a terminal and enter this command:

sudo fdisk -l

Please post what you got from it.

[Noadi]

Here's what I got (found thumb drive with Karmic so using that):

fdisk: invalid option -- '1'
Usage: fdisk [-b SSZ] [-u] DISK Change Partition Table
fdisk -l [-b SSZ] [-u] DISK List partition table(s)

and some more stuff but I'm thinking the invalid option is the most important part right?

[darolu]

It is a lowercase "L" not number "one" try copy and paste if you like:

sudo fdisk -l

It will print a table with your hard drives and their device nomenclature, find your hard drive on the list (you can tell by the size (MB) of it) and check if it is /dev/sda1 or /dev/sdb2 etc.
Ultimately what I want you to do is determine what file system your hard drive has, and then change your fstab file accordingly (tell the system what file system your hard drive has, right now is confused and can't determine it).
Well if you do find /dev/sda1 (you may find your hard drive has different letter assigned) then you do:

sudo parted /dev/sda1

You will now find a screen that looks like this:

GNU Parted 1.8.8.1.159-1e0e
Usando /dev/sda1
¡Bienvenido a GNU Parted! Teclee «help» para ver la lista de comandos.
(parted)

Yours will be in English (or w/e language you use) of course, after the (parted) part you will need to type "p" and hit enter, after this it will print something like:

GNU Parted 1.8.8.1.159-1e0e
Usando /dev/sda1
¡Bienvenido a GNU Parted! Teclee «help» para ver la lista de comandos.
(parted) p                                                                
Modelo: Desconocida (unknown)
Disco /dev/sda1: 52.4GB
Tamaño de sector (lógico/físico): 512B/512B
Tabla de particiones. loop

Numero  Inicio  Fin     Tamaño  Sistema de ficheros  Banderas
 1      0.00B   52.4GB  52.4GB  ntfs

(parted)

In my case, it is a ntfs file system (is my windows partition), in your case should be different, probably ext3 or xfs; with that info we can edit your fstab file, we'll wait for your reply to tell you how to do this.

[Noadi]

Okay maybe I'm an idiot, tried

sudo fdisk -l

and got a result. It's long

Disk /dev/sda: 40.0 GB, 40007761920 bytes
255 heads. 63 sectors/track, 4864 cylinders
Units= cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0008ddcb
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 4659 37423386 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 4660 4864 1646662+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 4660 4864 1646631 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Disk /dev/sdb: 2011 MB, 2011168768 bytes
62 heads, 62 sectors/track, 1021 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 3844 * 512 = 1968128 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000e1579

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 1021 1962331 6 FAT16

[Noadi]

Okay you replied while I was copying that.

[darolu]

Don't worry about it, it happens a lot (confusing "L" with "one"), more than you would imagine.
I edited my last post with more info/instructions, post what parted gave you please.
Edit: I just read your post, it is /dev/sda1.

[Noadi]

I got:

Model: Unknown (unknown)
Disk /dev/sda1: 38.3GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: loop

Number Start End Size File system Flags
1 0.00B 38.3GB 38.3GB ext3