Monday, July 06, 2009

Backup data after you can't boot

Ok, you can't boot windows and of course you don't have a backup or an up to date backup. Your c drive works but doesn't boot. What can you do?

Find another machine that works and create a Linux bootable CD with a version of Linux that let's you see the c drive and any USB hard drives or flash drives you attach, and you will be able to copy the files to the USB drive.

I downloaded an image file of a cd bootable version of Linux:

http://www.slax.org/get_slax.php

and I burned the ISO onto a cd, using this iso burner:

http://www.imgburn.com/index.php?act=download

when you boot with it, you can see the C drive and copy any files... along with lots of other things. You don’t have to know Linux it’s uses a graphics front end like windows…

It another tool to have in your quiver.

Incidentally, for Dell computers, control F11 on boot up will boot you into the recovery partition and even though the abbreviated boot/recovery program doesn’t allow you to attach an external drive to copy the c drive files, it does allow you to attach to a network and copy the files.

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