** Keith Watson keith.watson@kewill.com [2003-05-28 11:46]:
Not actually booted my CD and tried it, but apparently yes parted is on Knoppix apparently (can't find the link I found the quote on, but it was from Knoppix 3.2 onwards). Some other useful links you may be interested in:
[snip]
Thanks for the excellent links Paul, especially the one for PartImage.
No problem. It happens to be something I'm looking into myself, partly for speeding up the install process for machine (Windows 98 primarily unfortunately), and partly to recover some data on a couple of drives I'm having problems with.
One seems to have a duff sector which is preventing access to a partition (Fujitsu 20G, newest drive I had until I bought a replacement, but not one of the notorious ones), and the other (again a Fujitsu, but 13G this time) which seems to have lost partition information on the transfer to another machine.
I'm trying to work out whether Parted will recover things for me, or whether I'm better off to go with one of two commercial solutions I've found:
Acronis RecoverExpert - looks good because it supports Linux Ext2, Ext3, ReiserFS, and Linux Swap as well as the traditional Windows formats, but the demo is only the Windows GUI version (not the boot disk). This has a few issues booting with the drive 13G drive connected (so I can't get any idea of whether it will recover it) and with the 20G it just shows the partition as duff (it seems as though it simply recovers lost partitions rather than fixing corrupt ones).
Active Partition Recovery - only supports FAT and NTFS partitions, but the boot disk can see and read all the partitions in question and show me the data, so it has a distinct attraction in that respect!
Both about 30usd - if anyone has used either of these, or Parted or another utility to recover a partition problem I'd be interested to hear.
Oh, my tape backup is giving me hassle too - I'm not a happy penguin at the moment. Having said that, my Linux machines are going strong and it is only my Windows 2000 that is givin me hassle (duff hardware and the tape backups which verified fine are not allowing me to access them now that I've lost the boot drive that they were created from - classic backup!).
I think you meant this to go to the list Paul :o)
I've always used PartitionMagic (I've got Version 6.0 but they're up to 8.0 at present) which has served me very well. but it's not GPL or GNU/Linux though credit where it's due.
Amazon has the latest release of PM for 40UKP and also the back release 7.0 at 25UKP http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/search-handle-form/202-8112773-2091046
Never been unlucky enough to have to recover from the sort of problems you describe but I've no doubt someone on the list will have some war stories to tell :o)
** end quote [Keith Watson]
Oh, fnuts, done it again. Thanks Keith. I think this and the Linux1394 list must the the only two lists that don't set the reply to be the list - they're certainly the only ones I make this mistake on.
Anyway, yes, I use Partition Magic myself. I have version 5 that I got some time ago from PC World (don't cringe, it was about 15 quid and probably reduced due to the release of v6, I can't remember). I've also got a cover disk copy of Drive Image 4 that I've used to recover another drive that died (on my partents machine - a Quantum that developed a head ding). I manage to keep it running long enough to image it, which I then restored to the new drive. Very nice, apart from the fact that Windows fouled up the drive letters after I added new partitions to make use of the extra drive capacite (thank goodness for Letter Assigner).