i have an old hd (from what i can tell it's FAT) but i cant see any file on it, it says 42.xx/46.xxmb used. Anyways i have to get everything off without destroying any of the contents. I can see the top director on my ubuntu laptop through samba. Suggestions?
Thanks
-Alex

Hello, and Welcome to techhelpforum.

It could be that the hard disk parameters aren't quite correct. A disk can be somewhat "seen" with up to three settings (cylinders/heads/sectors) but only correctly "seen" with the parameters it was originally set up with.

I had this happen on an XP laptop that had failed. I booted with a Ubuntu CD, found the (email) files on the "corrupt" XP hard disk ( C: ) and copied them to an alternative hard disk ( D: ). After formatting and reinstalling XP, when I copied the files back, they were empty.

I suggest trying to mount the disk in a FAT32 or NTFS (XP) system and seeing if they're correctly found.