[whizzell]

hi, my vista ultimate is failing to boot.

I have booted into linux (on CD) and it says "drive is unmountable" for my main hard drive so i can't retrieve my files.... anyone know how to fix this?

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hi, my vista ultimate is failing to boot.

I have booted into linux (on CD) and it says "drive is unmountable" for my main hard drive so i can't retrieve my files.... anyone know how to fix this?

I'm not any expert, but I had this problem many times earlier with an aging hard drive and a rash of unexpected power cuts. What helped was using a bootable CD to boot, chkdsk, and shutting down. Booting into my Ubuntu then read and mounted the drive easily. I think a friend also did it by booting an install disk, and not installing, but simply checking the drive and then exiting the installation into a regular boot.

Whatever it is, it basically needs you to unmount it in Windows.

If for some reason you are still not able to do it, try at your own risk from your Linux:

sudo ntfsfix /dev/hda*

OR

mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda* /media/sda* -o force

Where the hda* and sda* is your partition/drive that is not mounting. This is supposed to be risky though, and while less "quick", it might be better to do it through windows.

Also check that the code is right for your Linux - I use this in Ubuntu, and I don't know if it is the same for you.

Edited by Vidyutraka, 23 June 2009 - 08:17 AM.

[Vidyutraka]

hi, my vista ultimate is failing to boot.

I have booted into linux (on CD) and it says "drive is unmountable" for my main hard drive so i can't retrieve my files.... anyone know how to fix this?

I'm not any expert, but I had this problem many times earlier with an aging hard drive and a rash of unexpected power cuts. What helped was using a bootable CD to boot, chkdsk, and shutting down. Booting into my Ubuntu then read and mounted the drive easily. I think a friend also did it by booting an install disk, and not installing, but simply checking the drive and then exiting the installation into a regular boot.

Whatever it is, it basically needs you to unmount it in Windows.

If for some reason you are still not able to do it, try at your own risk from your Linux:

sudo ntfsfix /dev/hda*

OR

mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda* /media/sda* -o force

Where the hda* and sda* is your partition/drive that is not mounting. This is supposed to be risky though, and while less "quick", it might be better to do it through windows.

Also check that the code is right for your Linux - I use this in Ubuntu, and I don't know if it is the same for you.

Edited by Vidyutraka, 23 June 2009 - 08:17 AM.

[Murray S.]

Howdy and welcome to GTG:

Two things you could try..

1: Slave the drive to a different system and get the files that way or;

2: Get yourself and external enclosure, out the hdd in there.

Murray