How do I access the hdd using a boot disk?

[RevoluChe]

I want to be able to browse my system files using a boot disk. I cannot start my operating system, and when I insert a windows make boot disk, I can never access the diskdrive. Only the floppy drive/CD-ROM I boot with. Is there a way to boot the computer with a disk and still be able to access the hard drive? Basically I want to copy a file from a floppy to the windows folder.

Thanks

 

[foxkm]

It sounds like you are using XP or Windows 2000. If thats the case, most likely you have your hard drive formatted (way the files are stored) using the NTFS file system. DOS (only OS you can boot off a floppy) does not support NTFS because NTFS is too complicated for DOS to handle, so the drives formatted with NTFS are ignored.

What you need to do is stick the hard drive in another Windows 2000/ XP machine (as a secondary drive) and let that XP handle the NTFS filesystem to be able to read/write to the drive.

It is also possible that you have any windows OS and your hard drive is completly bad, or the file system (fat32 even) is completly
corrupt. In this case, you data may be lost. You defently wanna put the drive in another computer with Windows 2000 or XP and
run disk utilities to try to repair the drive and data.

good luck

Kyle

 

[dougtran]

If you just want to copy a file from a floppy to a folder, why not do it from the OS?

 

[RevoluChe]

If you just want to copy a file from a floppy to a folder, why not do it from the OS?

I couldn't get windows to start. I also didnt want to connect the HDD to my other computer because it was a laptop HDD, and I've never opened up a laptop computer before(It also wasn't my computer to mess with =) But I finally found two programs that helped me solve the problem, NT Password and Registry Editor, an awesome little program that allowed me to edit the NTFS stored registry with a DOS boot disk, and NTFSDOS Pro, a $299 program that allows read/write to an NTFS filesystem with a DOS boot disk, although I didnt pay $300 for it =)

 

[dougtran]

Try this site for alternative to NTFSPro: http://www.bootdisk.com/

I always carry around several bootdisks and CD's that will allow me to see various file systems.

 

[pitupepito2000]

I would say use Knoppix, it is a bootable Linux CD, and you can run the whole operating system from the CD without installing anything into the hard drive. You can read and write to FAT partitions, but you can only read from NTFS partitions.

I hope this helps,
pitupepito

 

[Fallen Kell]

*nods in agreement with pitupepito2000". I was just about to post the same thing. You can use linux (if you know how) and just mount the hard drive (usually command is "mount /dev/hda /windows") which will allow you to access the hard drive by "cd /windows" and you will be at the C:\ or whatever on the hard drive. It might not be /dev/hda, it depends on how many hard drives you have as well as how many partitions you have on them and if they are SCSI or IDE. /dev/hda is the base partition of the first IDE hard drive, for other partitions, use hda2, hda3, etc., other disks are hdb, hdc, hdd, etc... If its was SCSI it would be sda, sdb, sdc, etc...

 

[Need4Speed]

or make yourself (or dl it) a linux boot floppy with NTFS support compiled into the kernel.