OK so I got ubuntu running and plugged my other windows formatted drives into the PC (while shut down). Problem is they do show up but I am getting a non zero exit status from windows, so they won't mount. Any suggestions?
Could this be because before I do anything in my PC, I unplug the power cord and then hit the power button to disperse any power in capaciters before doing anything else? Windows was shut down normally last time I used it.
If that's like the problem where you hibernate windows and then can't mount it on linux, you can ignore than and force it to mount. Is this W7 or 8? I would expect 8 to do some stunt like that.
1. run
sudo fdisk
(type in your password) to see where your windows is should be like /dev/sdb1 or something
then
mkdir /media/win/
sudo mount -t ntfs /dev/sda1 /media/win -o force
It might want you to do "ntfs-3g" or something.
Sudo means run the command with root privs. That's why it needs the password. mount puts the filesystem on the drive somewhere you can access it. like you put stuff on a shelf i guess. option -t is for type. That's NTFS /dev/sda1 is the location of the drive and partition from the previous command that you want to mount. /media/win is the directory you want to put it and the option -o force means it will ignore errors and just try to mount it anyway.
you should now be able to access your windows files in the /media/win/ directory from the command line or GUI file browser (I think ubuntu uses nautilus but I switched to "better" distros in 2008 so idk)
Shutting down fully and cold booting after it's been off for a while should have no effect either way.
oh it can be unsafe to just run commands you find online as root, that's why I explained what it does. I recommend reading the manual for the commands listed to know more, but if you just need to mount the drive and get at the files this should do it for you.
manual can usually be accessed by the following:
man mount
or
man fdisk
or online of course.