[SWLUG] Re: Run from CD Linux

[Rhys Sage]

> The Dell runs win 98 and refuses now to
>boot from the hard drive although the data seems
>intact follwing an investigation with a bootable dos
>cd.
>
Try booting it into DOS with Network support (F8 boot
options).  Then 
the CAT5 recovery method ought to work.

Question, as I admit I haven't followed the thread
100%.  Is the exPC 
(ie Windows XP Home) on NTFS or FAT32?  If it's NTFS
then you could have 
hassle with data recovery in DOS.  If that happens
your idea of the USB 
caddy is the best option.  Besides they're useful to
have around anyway :)

Oh.  Thought.  How much actual user data is involved? 
Could you get 
away with a USB Pendrive of say 256k or 512kb?

Kind regards,

Julian

Ok. I now have Gnoppix and Slax burnt to CD from the
downloaded ISO images via a free trial program called
Burn Deep. It seems to work although I haven't tried
the Linux disks live yet.

The PC situation is this:

HP Pavilion

CD/DVD combo drive, XP Home, 256mb. No FDD
Hacked around by the ex in his attempts to improve
performance (an act forbidden by his ex wife).
I've improved matters a bit but still have to run
through Black Viper's lists. This PC kinda-sorta
works.



Dell Inspirion 
1ghz CPU, Windows 98, FDD, 128mb, CDRW
Win 98 will not boot. Data exists on the drive.
Important tax data is on this computer.



Other Dell
Unknown/untested and reportedly broken. Not relevant
yet.



I hadn't thought of transferring via flash memory. If
Gnoppix/Slax willr ead a CF card via USB then that
could be a quick and easy answer.

Meanwhile (and for peace of mind) I'm tempted to nip
out to get a UBS caddy so I can take the old HDD out
and plug in, in order to rescue data more simply.

The HP appears to have a 38gb drive, formatted with a
logical partition into a 6gb rescue partition and a
32gb main data portion. I don't know if the useless
oaf of an ex has mucked around with the rescue portion
but I wouldn't mind betting he has. The rescue
partition is fat 32 and the main partition is ntfs.

My betting is that the data on the other drive has
been written into the default directory for Microsoft
Money or one of the Microsoft spreadsheets.

Of course... the good lady will not consider backups.

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