Comments on: Sometimes the best way to recover Windows data is Linux

By: Tips on travelling with a laptop « Successful Software

Tips on travelling with a laptop « Successful Software — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 09:47:57 +0000

[...] generator and customer database. I owe it to my business and my customers to keep these secure and the Windows password is no protection at all if someone gains physical access to your machine. So anything sensitive was encrypted using the free Truecrypt software. Whenever I brought the [...]

By: Nicola

Nicola — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 12:07:34 +0000

Hi, here’s a short happy-ending story on data rescueing.
I have a laptop Hitachi 2.5 80Gb drive that I plug to my HP (Vista) laptop via an external USB case. All of a sudden the drive would simply not display in Windows Explorer anymore (while I could see it in Device Manager), therefore coud not access data there. A red light on the case said I couldn’t read data on the drive.
I ran Knoppix and I could see the drive within the available resources on the desktop. I easily transfered the files on my local drive, restarted my HP with Vista, and accessed them again. I guess I’ll format my external drive now.
Thank you Linux!

By: Dave

Dave — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 11:05:21 +0000

I had problems with my 160gb drive in my old PC a while ago and used the same solution, booted into knoppix and recovered the files.

And fyi, it was an NTFS drive.

By: Andy Brice

Andy Brice — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 14:45:35 +0000

I think it was NTFS. But I’m not 100% sure.

By: alexandroid

alexandroid — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 14:37:22 +0000

>> Note that you don’t have to enter your Windows password to recover the files.

You did not specify a very crucial detail — did drive had NTFS or FAT32 filesystem? NTFS should much more difficult to restore…

By: Vasudev Ram

Vasudev Ram — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 16:28:46 +0000

Interesting post, and links and comments too.

I had written an article for the Indian magazine Linux For You (LFY) (*) a while ago about something similar. The article can be accessed here:

http://www.dancingbison.com/about.html

under the Writings section (look for the link titled “How Knoppix saved the day”), or go directly here:

http://www.dancingbison.com/writings/knopresc.txt

(LFY doesn’t have links to the actual content of any of its articles, of either current or previous issues), that’s why I gave the link to the copy of my article that’s on my web site.)

The article’s a bit dated, but is based on a real-life issue I handled, and most or all of it is probably still relevant, since the kind of problem (and solution) it describes hasn’t changed much.

(*) The web site for Linux For You used to be http://www.linuxforu.com, but that URL now redirects to another site called http://www.openitis.com (what a name!), which is the name for a larger publication which Linux For You is now a part of, it looks like.

The magazine itself (Linux For You) is a print magazine (the web site only has info about the articles), and is still in existence (it started a few years ago and has got better with time) and still going strong (I just bought the latest issue today). It had fairly good content (with some focus on India). They also give one or two free CDs and/or DVDs, often including a recent Linux distribution (e.g. the latest one has Ubuntu 8.04 LTS), with each issue.

Update: There *is* still a separate site for the magazine – its now changed to http://www.lfymag.com. But it still doesn’t have the actual content of articles online.

- Vasudev Ram

By: Max Carlson

Max Carlson — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 14:53:06 +0000

I’ve used Knoppix and the Ultimate boot CD many times to rescue data. Also, I can’t recommend Gibson Research’s Spinrite highly enough. Several times in the past few years, I’ve been able to rescue systems that wouldn’t boot – even after a laptop took a hard fall when someone tripped on the power cord. It even works on iPods! It’s my first tool of choice for data recovery when a simple boot-into-linux and copy won’t work!

By: andyparkes

andyparkes — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 12:54:57 +0000

System file was missing?

How odd..never seen that before!

For the purposes for this you could grab one from another system

Also you can actually miss that step out if you can obtain access to the system restore directory via other methods

By: Tony Edgecombe

Tony Edgecombe — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 19:04:54 +0000

That’s funny, I had exactly the same error message on my brothers PC today.

By: Stephane Grenier

Stephane Grenier — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 18:04:36 +0000

I have to admit that Knoppix has saved me at least two times in the past that I can quickly remember. I always keep a Knoppix disk around just in case. The only issue I’ve ever had with that distro is when I tried to book up on my first raid system and the Knoppix distro was older. But a quick download and all was well.

Btw, I also bring it with me when I need to use the net another computer that’s not under my control. This way I can be sure the computer is virus and spyware free ;)

And thanks for the link to Truecrypt Andy. I’ve been wanting to find a tool like that but I just haven’t had the time. I’ll check it out.