i have no idea what i am doing or what is supposed to happen

[someone]

first am trying to recover a hardware mirrored raid pair. have installed both the 7.2-wip release and also the 7.1-stable releases i think. when i try to run them from the command line bash states they do not exist, when point of fact bash can list the programs, or at least just the program titles maybe and then a prompt. also trying less states that they may be binaries so something is taking up space. i do not get any other indication that some event is happening; with the exception of when i try starting it from a terminal window in xface my server locks up and the only action that can happen is the mouse pointer moves around the screen and i have to reboot the server, which takes a long time to re-check the filesystems...each time.
i have read and re-read the relevant portions of the manual (install, starting testdisk) in case i have missed or misinterpreted something incorrectly...but ended up here anyway.
also after i successfully recover the partition, i will be trying to recover the files on that partition. so with the above presenting itself, any preemptive thoughts on the file recovery potion will be great and probably save a needless post.

any help or thoughts will be appreciated and thank you

[recuperation]

You can run both programs using a Gparted disc or USB stick.
An installation is not necessary.

[someone]

i will try those methods thank you

[someone]

nope, same story except now the programs are on a memory stick.

[cgrenier]

When you try to start the program, run "./testdisk_static" if the program is testdisk_static, otherwise bash will not know you are trying to run the program in the current directory.