Help: Unable to mount USB HDD now [Solved]

[Guy]

I don't know how valuable your data is. But if it is valuable you may want to buy another hard drive to back it up on.

[bmarkus]

I don't know how valuable your data is. But if it is valuable you may want to buy another hard drive to back it up on.

Well, normally recovery tools needs teh same amount of free storage area to backup recovered files.

I do not know any LINUX tools to recover WINDOWS file system

[libretto]

Guy,

Might consider this option. But trying to fix this error MS caused. The strange thing is Puppy/Fedora/Slax/Ubuntu all can have access to this drive(all show up as sda2) only TC unable to mount it. and I like TC alot.

[Guy]

If you copy all of your data onto another drive, you can use any partitioning program to delete the existing partition and create a new one. I like Parted Magic, which uses GParted. You can also install GParted and others in Tiny Core.

I don't know how you use your drive, but you may also consider splitting it up, and also having an Ext3 partition for Linux stuff.

To work, the partition you access from Windows, may need to be the first one.

[libretto]

Guy,
I'm trying to stay away from MS as much as possible, but would like to keep the drive in FAT32 format just because it can save more stuff on a big drive in FAT32 than ext3....

[bmarkus]

Guy,

Might consider this option. But trying to fix this error MS caused. The strange thing is Puppy/Fedora/Slax/Ubuntu all can have access to this drive(all show up as sda2) only TC unable to mount it. and I like TC alot.

If other system can access the drive and it looks OK, you do not need any recovery tool, just install the relevant NTFS extension, see my previous post.

[libretto]

bmarkus,
I did

If other system can access the drive and it looks OK, you do not need any recovery tool, just install the relevant NTFS extension

but still unable to mount.

[libretto]

FYI "PowerQuest Partition Magic 8 Pro" has convert NTFS > FAT32 option. Will post end result.

[bmarkus]

Why to have a 1TB on a risky FAT file system without journaling??? The only case where it my be accepted is a media player which is reading only the files.

[Guy]

I'm trying to stay away from MS as much as possible, but would like to keep the drive in FAT32 format just because it can save more stuff on a big drive in FAT32 than ext3....

Are you aware that you can't save files over 4gb on FAT32, so you can't save copies of DVDs?

I assume you understand Linux owner and group, and permissions, and know these are lost when saving to FAT32.

You can install programs in Windows to access Ext3.

You do whatever you are happy doing. Just some info.

[libretto]

Guy,

Are you aware that you can't save files over 4gb on FAT32, so you can't save copies of DVDs?

No DVD's for me in this drive, I do not use this as AV media mainly for backup files.

I assume you understand Linux owner and group, and permissions, and know these are lost when saving to FAT32.

Yes I do, no need for that.

You can install programs in Windows to access Ext3.

3rd party programs ? Please tell me, it's good to know.

You do whatever you are happy doing. Just some info.

Appreciated! 

bmarkus,

Why to have a 1TB on a risky FAT file system without journaling???

Yes I know, I only want to have a BIGGER drive to backup stuff, I'm greedy .

[bmarkus]

You like risky life

[libretto]

"PowerQuest Partition Magic 8 Pro"
Test results:
1) Use VirtualBox XP to convert NTFS > FAT32 on boot drive C:     ----  OK it works !
2) Convert it back NTFS also works.  

It does need some empty space on the drive to "move" while converting from NTFS > FAT32.

Update:
*Unable to convert NTFS > FAT32 for USB HDD only available is to convert it to a Logical drive.
*Boot form "Partition Magic 8.05" doesn't see the USB HDD
*bmarkus instruction works, I didn't include "filesystems-2.6.29.1-tinycore.tcz" in my original tce directory. "ntfs-3g" should have a dependency to include "filesystems-2.6.29.1-tinycore.tcz"

Install filesystems-2.6.29.1-tinycore.tcz extension, it will provide read only support to the NTFS partition. For read-write you need ntfs-3g

[Guy]

You can install programs in Windows to access Ext3.

http://www.chrysocome.net/explore2fs

http://www.fs-driver.org/