File Retrieval

784 Views 2 Replies 3 Participants Last post by Old Rich, Apr 6, 2011

BananaBuddy

Discussion Starter · Apr 5, 2011

Howdy!
Long time visitor, first time poster.

I have been trying to fix up my computer for months, using my brothers laptop and visiting various tech sites. After each fix, everything seems to work fine, but every time I turn it off and on again, the same problems arise (problems that prevent me from using Windows). Eventually, different problems seemed to come along with the usual ones. It feels like I'm putting plywood over quicksand.

I'll spare you the details. I'm sick of trying to fix my computer. It's 5 or 6 years old, I should have bought a new one a while ago anyways.

What I want to know is if there is a way to retrieve particular files using only what is offered in the Boot Menu. I still can't get into Windows and I'm almost certain that the problem has become fubar.

Can anyone help me out here?

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Daifne

· #2 · Apr 5, 2011

What I usually do is pull the hard drive out of the computer and attach it via USB to another computer using one of these: Newegg.com - VANTEC CB-ISATAU2 SATA/IDE to USB 2.0 Adapter

There are better ones, which I actually use, but for a one time use, this should be fine.

Once you attach the drive, it should show up on the other computer as an additional drive. You can then move your data from it.

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Old Rich

· #3 · Apr 6, 2011

You can take the drive out and temporarily attach it to a working pc to salvage the data, as suggested above.

Hard Drive Recovery Tutorial - How To Slave A Hard Drive

You may have to take ownership of the files first: How to take ownership of a file or a folder in Windows XP

. . or, You can use an adaptor like this: or an external enclosure like this.

or, you could use Ubuntu - this would eliminate the need to physically remove the Hard Drive.

You can get it from here: Download | Ubuntu

Step #2 on that page shows you how to create the USB/CD.

Once you boot into Ubuntu, (choose the option where it runs off the USB/CD) you can use it to copy your files from the Windows Partition to an external hard drive (Note: Do not copy anything to the Ubuntu Filesystem as it will not be saved on shut-down)

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