How to access HD contents with Ubuntu Bootable USB

I've got a 16 GB USB with 4 GB persistent memory running 10.04.3 Ubuntu on my T60 Thinkpad. (The Thinkpad is running WinXP if it makes any difference) The problem I'm running into is that I can't see or access the laptop's main HD through the file browser.

Using the disk utility, I can see that the 60GB drive is there, but I cannot access the files.

There is nothing wrong with the laptop's HD, I'm just trying to see if I can create a rescue USB to recover files.

Can anyone help me with some linux magic?

3 Answers

Run

$ sudo mkdir /media/hhd
$ sudo mount -v /dev/sdxx /media/hhd

Since you the partition is not getting mounted automatically you will have to mount it manually.

First find out the partition name it will be named like /dev/sda1 or /dev/hda1 [if not check /dev/sdb1 or /dev/sdb2]

create a folder /media/wind

sudo mount /dev/sda1 /media/wind -t ntfs -o nls=utf8,umask=0222

This should mount your drive in /media/wind

I would mount it with:

sudo mount /dev/sda1 /media/windows -t auto

Maybe you're mounting a FAT32 or extFAT drive, Ubuntu should be capable of detect the right filesystem. If it doesn't work try:

sudo mount /dev/sda1 /media/windows -t (ntfs/fat32 or extFAT) -force

One of this three options should mount a readable folder in /media/windows