Here's the setup:

The Machine:
Systemax P4 2.4 GHz with 512 MB of RAM
Two 80 GB HDs running off an ATA 133 PCI IDE 32Bit RAID Controller Card
DVD-ROM
CD-RW
Windows XP Home Edition

The Problem:
User was performing a Windows Update (as best as I can deduce, the Windows update was upgrading the XP installation to SP2) when all began to go awry upon the reboot. Now the system just goes into the well-known, failed-SP2-installation boot loop.

The Challenge:
I am attempting to recover/extract the user's data (using a Knoppix 3.4 CD) so that I can restage his system. As far as my restaging plans go, I intend to pull out the two very-closely-stacked 80 GB drives AND the RAID Controller Card and replace it with one large IDE drive going straight to the motherboard. I'll daisy-chain the DVD-ROM and CD-RW devices.

To get to my question, this is my first attempt to use Knoppix to recover data from a crashed Windows drive, and it's a RAID striped set of two drives to top it all off! I'm able to boot to the Knoppix CD, and I'm eventually presented with a very nice KDE desktop. Yet, when I mount the hda1 drive (via the icon on the desktop), it takes a VERY long time to present me with a list of directories and files. Furthermore, I don't recognize any of the directory or file names, and when I poke around too much, Konqueror freezes and/or crashes (read disappears).

Any ideas how to proceed with this data recovery attempt? Is this even doable given the stated RAID configuration?

Thanks.

Todd

The big problem is that the drives are raided... and Knoppix, as well as pretty much Linux in general doesn't usually support the pseudo-hardware raid of those cards much if at all. What's the card, exactly?

/sbin/lspci

Probably isn't supported in its own right.

Cheers,

Finegan