Quote from CSU1 :

mrodgers. Get your hands on a copy of Ubuntu, pop the disc in and choose to boot from cd. From here it's up to you in which way you want to recover the data, if you choose to run the live CD as a live user you will have access to all of your drives(unless HDD#2 is totaly screwed).

Upon further searching around on the net at *cough*work*cough, I found this as well. This is what I am going to do. Though, I have no experience with this Linux stuff.

I do have several computers I can spread my files around on for temporary backup. Unfortunately, every computer I have access to only has around 30 gig hard drives, which I have much more data than that. I also have thousands of gigabytes available by transfering to my work laptop, then transfering to the work network temporarily, hehehe.

Downloading Ubuntu as I type....

EDIT: Downloaded, burned onto disk, and it didn't work in the laptop (or I didn't wait long enough, which it seemed like I waited forever with a blank screen and no sounds from the cd drive...) Stuck the disk in the desktop and bingo! Running Ubuntu from CD and I can see everything on my c: drive. I'll give the 2nd drive a try to check if I can see it tomorrow as it's disconnected at the moment. Now I can move and backup my files and give the disk a complete restore. I've been wanting to do a restore for a long time anyways. I've never restored it since starting it up in 2005

Amen, At work though, if I were you I'd check with IT before hand, last thing you want is to discover that your PC was infected through a meeting with IT at work = *facepalm*

If HDD#2 refuses to do anything I'd suggest another liveCD - Gparted, it's easy GUI lets you wipe the HDD to NTFS and start over clean and fresh.

Quote from CSU1 :

If HDD#2 refuses to do anything I'd suggest another liveCD - Gparted, it's easy GUI lets you wipe the HDD to NTFS and start over clean and fresh.

for the love of god, do not use gparted. i've trashed my partition table on several hard drives using that program.

Quote from CSU1 :

If HDD#2 refuses to do anything I'd suggest another liveCD - Gparted, it's easy GUI lets you wipe the HDD to NTFS and start over clean and fresh.

Not looking to wipe the drive and repartition and format to reuse on the 2nd drive. I'm just looking to move files off it. Need to move files off of C: as well before doing a format and reinstall of XP.

I have another smaller drive. From within Ubuntu, can I format the drive and have XP see it after XP is reinstalled? I am going to use the smaller drive to backup some files. Or, I may end up with a new drive (don't think funds allow though right now) and will want to partition and format a new drive. Can I do that within Ubuntu or would Windows XP have a problem with drives formatted from within Ubuntu?

Quote from mrodgers :

Not looking to wipe the drive and repartition and format to reuse on the 2nd drive. I'm just looking to move files off it. Need to move files off of C: as well before doing a format and reinstall of XP.

I have another smaller drive. From within Ubuntu, can I format the drive and have XP see it after XP is reinstalled? I am going to use the smaller drive to backup some files. Or, I may end up with a new drive (don't think funds allow though right now) and will want to partition and format a new drive. Can I do that within Ubuntu or would Windows XP have a problem with drives formatted from within Ubuntu?

as long as you format it as NTFS (type 07) or FAT32 (type 0C or 0E, depending on LBA), you should be fine...

Quote from mrodgers :

Not looking to wipe the drive and repartition and format to reuse on the 2nd drive. I'm just looking to move files off it. Need to move files off of C: as well before doing a format and reinstall of XP.

I have another smaller drive. From within Ubuntu, can I format the drive and have XP see it after XP is reinstalled? I am going to use the smaller drive to backup some files. Or, I may end up with a new drive (don't think funds allow though right now) and will want to partition and format a new drive. Can I do that within Ubuntu or would Windows XP have a problem with drives formatted from within Ubuntu?

Try Paragon Rescue Kit. It's a bootable CD that allows you to transfer files off the hard drive. Assuming the HD is accessable that is. It can also be used to fix Boot issues. Though, I've never used it for that so can't comment on it's safety. It doesn't require any Linux knowledge, apart from an understanding of its file system naming. But a bit of poking around will soon make sense of that.

http://www.paragon-software.com/home/rk-express/

Paragon also does other free software, (of course all have certain limitations):

http://www.paragon-software.com/free/



Also, there is Seagate Discwizard, which you can use to image, back-up and restore your partitions or drive to/from just about any location including a network location on another PC.

http://www.seagate.com/www/en- ... port/downloads/discwizard

I've yet to find a bootable CD Partitioning software bar GParted, that isn't DOS based and a complete pig to work with.

So if anyone has any recommendations, they'd be welcome.

I'm already on it with Ubuntu. I've gotten about 20 gb of data moved, all during which I am also sorting out and deleting a lot of stuff (I was on dialup for a long time and downloaded many videos for LFS and RC elsewhere and brought home to save on computer. Many gig I can just delete...)

I still have 30 gig of my photography stuff to move, which is going on my laptop and staying as a mostly off-site backup. All the rest are a lot of data files (photo magazine downloads and stuff along with game data.) which are going on the extra 30 gig drive that I have from another computer.

So, yeah, Ubuntu running off the CD is working great for this to where I will be able to restore XP back. Just gonna take quite some time as I don't have any way of moving large quantities of files from the desktop to the laptop. No router as the laptop stays at work 99% of the time.

The sorting of files is what is taking the most time. I'll probably be able to rid of about half my files.

Update:

What great fun. I have many games the kids play, thus many saved files that I sorted through. I have many photos, many videos, many music files, and many programs downloaded (irfanview, thumbsplus, zonealarm, antivirus, malware scanners, etc, not programs like you are thinking) and many many personal data files. I just spent several days on the Ubuntu live CD hunting, sorting, and copying files.

Previous experience of HP/Compaq restores led me to believe the hard drive would be wiped with a format. Nope. Windows XP reinstalled and all my data that I spent days copying over is all still there!

It figures.

I'm now going through the horror of Windows Update with a 4 year old operating system.