[PLUG] Reading an 80GB hard disk with Mandrake Linux

[<amenex@voicenet.com>]

Hello PLUG !

There are several websites where I can send my 80GB hard drive
to be deciphered and transferred to CD's.  Cost ~ $1000.

Any solution that you folks can offer that's less costly would be
most welcome.  Even consulting, hand-holding, etc.

This is the drive that's had its O/S files corrupted or lost as the
result of getting the drive letters swapped in a previous W98SE
install, followed by a botched attempt to install WinXP.  The drive
was formatted originally with Maxtor's MaxBlast S/W and worked
fine in W98SE.  The BIOS can see all 80GB just fine, and W98SE
could access all 80GB fine as well.  The drive would not boot in
WinXP unless the WinXP installation CD was in place.  I dare not
put the two 80GB drives back in together in any system until I can
restore access to the remaining good drive, which is the original
slave drive that was never copied to from the botched WinXP install.
I have been attempting to read the WinXP 80GB drive.

I have also tried starting the BookPC with the W98SE 80GB drive
shoehorned in instead of the BookPC's CD-R/W drive.  The 80GB
drive tries to start W98SE when I make it the first boot drive, but 
wants an installation CD that it can't get, 'cuz there's only one IDE
controller in the BookPC.  I know that the 80GB disk is OK insofar 
as the FAt32 is concerned, because the screen shows one of my 
own pix as background during the startup process.

When I make the BookPC's own 40GB drive first in the boot process, Linux tries
to detect this 80GB drive, but it disappears from the list 
of detcted hardware, and I cannot figure out how to access the log 
files to see where things go wrong.  And I haven't been able to 
mount the 80GB drive, even  using the syntax suggested on this list 
last week.

I'm certain that my main problem is that the disk was formatted
with Maxtor's proprietary S/W, EZ-Bios.  How do I undo this S/W
without botching the data ?  Alternatively, how do I tell Linux what
file system to look for ?  

Offers of experienced Linux help would be greatly appreciated.

Best regards,
George Langford
amenex@amenex.com
amenex@voicenet.com
http://www.amenex.com/
_________________________________________________________________________
Philadelphia Linux Users Group        --       http://www.phillylinux.org
Announcements - http://lists.netisland.net/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce
General Discussion  --   http://lists.netisland.net/mailman/listinfo/plug