Mount a Windows 7 partition with Fedora 16 Live Cd

[jgmerek]

Hello I am trying to mount a windows 7 partition using a Fedora 16 live CD.

fdisk -l shows the following

Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1              63       80324       40131   de  Dell Utility
/dev/sda2   *       81920    30801919    15360000    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda3        30801920   625140399   297169240    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT

and here is the command and result I am getting:

[root@localhost liveuser]# mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda3 ./windisk 
NTFS signature is missing.
Failed to mount '/dev/sda3': Invalid argument
The device '/dev/sda3' doesn't seem to have a valid NTFS.
Maybe the wrong device is used? Or the whole disk instead of a
partition (e.g. /dev/sda, not /dev/sda1)? Or the other way around?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[AndrewSerk]

Hello jgmerek and Welcome to Fedora Fora,

There are a few ways to mount the partitions. I believe the easiest way to mount a partition from a live cd is to use the disk utility "palimpsest".

From palimpsest on the left side, click on the drive that contains the partitions to be mounted. On the right side click on the partition to mount and click the mount button. That will mount the partition in /media/ . Repeat the steps for the next partition/drive.

Hope this helps,

[nonamedotc]

Originally Posted by jgmerek

[root@localhost liveuser]# mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda3 ./windisk 
NTFS signature is missing.
Failed to mount '/dev/sda3': Invalid argument
The device '/dev/sda3' doesn't seem to have a valid NTFS.
Maybe the wrong device is used? Or the whole disk instead of a
partition (e.g. /dev/sda, not /dev/sda1)? Or the other way around?

The filesystem type should have been ntfs instead of ntfs-3g, I believe. That's what the man page says too! I am not sure if that would be the problem. Have you already tried with 'ntfs' as the fs type? Just a suggestion. What Andrew mentioned would be the easiest way though! Cheers.

[PabloTwo]

"ntfs-3g" is just fine.

mkdir /media/windisk
mount -t ntfs-3g -o rw /dev/sda3 /media/windisk

---------- Post added at 12:45 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:37 PM ----------

Works as long as the "Live" CD has the ntfs-3g package included. I would be surprised if it didn't.

[jgmerek]

Thank you guys. Unfortunately, Palimpsest does not seem to work either, I can see the drive and the partitions, but when I click on one there is no option to mount the partition. All I see is Format Volume, Delete Partition, and Edit partition.

Also I did try -t ntfs and -t ntfs-3g and both give the same error.

Any other suggestions?

Thanks again, I appreciate the help!

---------- Post added at 12:36 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:55 AM ----------

Hey guys I figured out what was wrong. Thanks for all your help!

[nonamedotc]

Just curious - Could you share what was wrong and how you fixed it? Thanks.

[Doug G]

I recently used f16 live xfce spin cd to mount an xp partition. I don't think I even had to specify a type at all to mount the ntfs partition.

Even easier, the xfce live cd puts desktop icons for the unmounted windows partition(s) and all you have to do is double-click to mount.

You might try making a mount point outside of /media I still use something like /mnt/sda3 as a mount point.