Ok I've burned SystemRescueCD and have run it.
I've tried to mount the drive using the command "ntfs-3g /dev/sda2 /mnt/windows" as suggested on the opening screen, but I get the following error message:
ntfs_attr_pread_i: ntfs_pread failed: Input/output error
Failed to read $AttrDef, unexpected length (-1 != 2560).
Failed to mount '/dev/sda2': Input/output error
NTFS is either consistent, or you have hardware faults, or you have SoftRAID/FakeRAID hardware. In the first case run chkdsk /f on Windows then reboot into Windows TWICE. The usage of the /f parameter is very important! If you have SoftRAID/FakeRAID hardware then first you must activate it and mount a different device under the /dev/mapper/ directory, (e.g. /dev/mapper/nvidia_eahaabcc1). Please see the 'dmraid' documentation for details.
I have no idea what any of this means, but since my hardware is running Puppy and SystemRescueCD ok, I think it's an NTFS problem.
I've now created a BartPE CD and am running that. I have opened the file manager, but it seems unable to read drive C:\. What should be my next step if I want to recover my saved hard drive files? Is there any data recovery software I should download, or should I run check disk?
Edited by dwarf_of_ignorance, 27 December 2008 - 04:39 PM.