I need a recommend for the best Linux to do the following

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

I have a Western Digital Worldbook drive that has stopped functioning. It's out of warranty so there's no problem with getting the 1 TB drive out of it and recognized in Windoze. However, the Worldbook formats its drives using a Linux format. There's a lot of good info on that drive, so I'd like to be able to boot it into a Linux computer and copy it to a NTFS drive. Once this is done I can boot back into Windoze, format the original WD drive as NTFS and put the files back, and simply install it into the host computer for normal network sharing.

A long road, perhaps, but it's at least straightforward, or it should be. I just tried to put the WD drive onto a Mandriva Free computer and it won't even boot. (The same computer, booting into XP, sees the drive just fine but can't read the Linux format.)

It would be far simpler to have a Windoze utility that could read the format, but I haven't found anything like that. Does such a beast exist?

Which Linux is best for such technical work? It's an interesting problem, and I'd love to solve it in the next day or two with your help.

[RoyGBiv]

1. What I'd do ...

I'm a little murky on the details here, but that's probably my fault. My brain's been a little fried for a week or so.

Plug the drive from which you're trying to get the data into your Windows machine.

Get a LiveCD like Knoppix, burn it, then boot from the CD. You'll have a functioning Linux system and can mount both your NTFS drive and the Linux drive. Note: the drives will not be mounted by default, or at least they weren't the last time I used Knoppix. You will have to mount them. If I recall Knoppix correctly, the system will detect the existence of the drives and place an icon on the desktop for each. You can right-click on the icon and choose to mount it ... again, if I recall correctly.

Incidentally, do you know what format it is? There are many of them. I'd guess ext3, but it could be anything.

Once you've mounted both drives, copy the data from the Linux drive to your NTFS drive. NTFS is not "officially" supported, and you may or may not get warnings about this. Reading an NTFS is no problem. Writing to it can cause issues. I offer this as a disclaimer and a possible warning. I, personally, have not had a problem writing to an NTFS drive.

Anyway, once you do this, reboot into Windows and go about doing whatever else you're going to do.

If that makes sense ...

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

5. The format appears to be "FD"

I'm far from a Linux guru- I just hope I can get a version that will read it properly.

[RoyGBiv]

6. I've never heard of that ...

FD ... that means floppy drive to me ... doesn't fit any of the initials of file system formats I know about.

UDF (universal disc format) maybe? If its UDF, you should be able to read it in WinXP and read/write with Vista.

Is it possible this drive is formatted with some proprietary format?

[MyNameGoesHere]

2. My guess is when you do your google search you are

not spelling Windows properly. Try WINDOWS instead of Windoze. Then maybe someone can help you.

[hobbit709]

3. Just what the OP wanted, a snarky answer

[MyNameGoesHere]

8. Well he included snarky opinion in his request

so why not?

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

4. It's called a sensahumma.

Try renting one some time to see how it works. You may be surprised.

[MyNameGoesHere]

7. Is that a hybrid mix of Hummer and Sensimilla?

Do you smoke that or drive it?

[hobbit709]

9. Google search results for "Windoze"

Results 1 - 10 of about 1,320,000 for windoze. (0.33 seconds)

[MyNameGoesHere]

10. Ok i can up that

1 - 10 of about 34,400,000 for Microsoft Windows. (0.39 seconds)

[PennDem]

11. Windows utility

I don't have personal experience with this tool but it may work for you.

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

[RoyGBiv]

12. That would work for ext2 ...

I've not used that one, but I've used utilities like it.

The problem is that ext2 isn't really common anymore.

I dunno ... good suggestion, just saying ...

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

15. Turned out to be an ext3 Linux Raid partiton.

I was misinformed as to an article I read describing the same problem experienced by others.

My bad.

[IDemo]

13. That's what I use, highly recommend it

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

14. That's the one. It works perfectly.

I now have access to all the data on the hard drive.

Thanks a Brazillian!