Can you use a Linux distro to recover files on a crashed hard drive?

[Macro2]

Suppose your Windows based HD crashes. Computer won't boot. Is is possible to insert a Linux Distro boot disk, boot up and somehow recover files?

 

[KeyserSoze]

Get Knoppix here. (Click on the American/British flag to change to English.)

It's a Live CD version of Linux, that does not install anything to your hard drive. Boot up to it (Change your boot sequence to your CD-ROM drive.) And it'll take you into a very nice comfortable Linux distribution. It can read NTFS partitions just fine. And you can get access to your files here.

Two questions though: 1) If your hard drive is having problems in itself, such as hardware failure...you may run into the same problems. It's it's just a FUBAR'ed Windows Install, you should be fine. What is the problem?!?!?

2) How are you going to copy/backup your files?!?! I believe it has USB 2.0 support, so an external drive would be ideal.


(I hope that was all right )




KS

 

[P0ldy]

I think you can also burn CDs in Knoppix provided you have two CD drives. Or get DHCP working and transfer them to another location if you're able to.

 

[bersl2]

If you have enough RAM (>=1GiB), you can add "toram" to the command line at the bootloader, which will copy the filesystem compeletly into RAM, freeing up the CD drive.

 

[Macro2]

I've got Knoppix and a couple other distros on CDs. I dunno how to accres the ntfs files with Knoppix though. I can either burn to a CD, copy to a USB drive or network to another computer. I also have a external parallel port zip drive if that would work.

Of course all this depends on whether the files are still accessible.

 

[Nothinman]

Get a copy of Knoppix Hacks, I believe most of what you want to do is covered.