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Recovering files from a laptop hard drive
Spoom182
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Here's the current situation: My sister needs some word documents off of an old lap top. The lap top has a broken windows installation: It hangs at "PBR 2" (Partition Boot Record) when you try to start it up. We're using one of those Dell restoration discs, but I'm pretty sure that'd delete everything on the C partition, which we obviously want to avoid.
Question 1: Would using a stock restoration disc (the CD emphasizes to use it on computers with windows software already installed) delete all of the files we need?
In case the answer to that question is yes, I've got another idea that I want try. I want to boot up with Ubuntu from a CD, and try to access the hard drive like that. Then I could look around in it and extract the things that we'd need. Would this probably work?
In case neither of these ideas work, is there another solution?
Question 1: Would using a stock restoration disc (the CD emphasizes to use it on computers with windows software already installed) delete all of the files we need?
In case the answer to that question is yes, I've got another idea that I want try. I want to boot up with Ubuntu from a CD, and try to access the hard drive like that. Then I could look around in it and extract the things that we'd need. Would this probably work?
In case neither of these ideas work, is there another solution?
Spoom182 on
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edit: oh and the Dell restoration disc is probably going to wipe the computer unless it also lets you boot into the recovery console or anything else like that (haven't used a Dell resto CD for anything other than reinstalling the OS AFAIK so dunno about what else it can do).
http://www.cablestogo.com/product.asp?cat_id=941&sku=30504
you can look around for cheaper ones, this one has the ability to connect just about any drive you may have in that laptop
This will allow you to plug your laptop hdd in usb onto another computer and you can just drag the data off the drive. Most likely the windows data is corrupt but you should still be able to read the data off the drive if the drive hasn't failed totally.