Data recovery from Windows install?

Just as the title says!
dalyplanet

#1 Data recovery from Windows install?

Post by dalyplanet »

Hey folks, my main home PC (currently running malariacontrol.net) had a disk crash over the weekend and I've only just found out.

Unfortunately this machine has loads of important data on it (not backed up of course - after 15 years in IT you would think I should know better) and the disk is not accessible…

Had a brief look last night before the footie and usual Windows recovery stuff appears to fall short – surprise surprise!

Anyways, here is the QUESTION: Has anyone ever tried a Linux Boot CD like this http://lifehacker.com/software/disk-rec ... 192982.php or http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=3214 to recover data from Windows?

I’ll give it a try after work but I’m not filled with the feeling of success yet.
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Andrew
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#2

Post by Andrew »

WinPE 2

Assuming you have a PC to build it on then thats what I would recommend.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/deta ... laylang=en

Whilst it is a manual process to make the disk I have made up an application interface to it so it's fully automated after you select what you want from the nice shiny GUI.

Boot up to that from USB or CD and you have full access to your hard drive.
Can run any native 32bit application in PE (assuming you are running PE32, but a 64bit PE could be built) that you would normally run on Vista


In fact, to save you a lot of hassle I can make you up an ISO that you can burn on to CD or DVD and away you go. It would be about a 100meg ISO if thats any use.


Once you get booted into PE, just sling in a USB hard drive or add a 2nd SATA/IDE and copy your stuff that way.
If it's just the MBR or something that's broken and needs reset then that can be done in PE too.

Very a versatile tool. Although it's not what I use it for, I'm more involved with using it as a deployment tool, but it can be used for recovery too (under vista it's called WinRE and replaces the XP recovery console...although thats not to say it cant be used to recover XP data)

To answer your original question though....nope, never used a Linux version...simply because I have no need for it :)
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Matelot

#3

Post by Matelot »

If the data structure of the HDD is intact, then any boot CD, ie winpe, linux distros, ultimate boot cd. Should give you access to the HDD.

If you have a usb pen drive big enough, the plug it in and boot from the CD, you should be able to copy your data over to the usb drive and take it from there.
dalyplanet

#4

Post by dalyplanet »

Thanks for the advice guys.

I didn’t get a chance to look into this for long last night… (too engrossed in the SPL finale)…I did boot to Linux happily, but the faulty drive didn’t appear, the second working one did.

This morning before leaving for work I unplugged the second drive and suddenly the first one (the faulty one) booted up???...Really bizarre.

I’m currently copying several hundred GB’s of data off the drive since I’ve lost all confidence in it.

Will go back and check at lunchtime if I’ve been successful.
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