how to retrieve data

Hi all..
Because of PSU failure, some Windows XP files have been damaged and i can't load my OS anymore. The thing is i need to retrieve some data from my hard drive. I was thinking of buying i new hard drive, which i would need anyway, as the current one is too small and format it as a master with a fresh installation of Windows XP and the old one as a slave so that i could retrieve my data from it. Would it work or because i would have two installations of XP, although on two separate hard drives, it would not work? Thank you very much.

dotto,

Yes, your idea will work. Your new drive would be setup as the boot drive and set as the C: drive, your current drive would then be picked up as probably E:\.

Make sure that your boot settings in your BIOS have the new C:\ drive as the higher priority in the boot order so that it boots from that one first.

Alternatively, you could get your data from your old drive by connecting it to another PC using an IDE ribbon connector or SATA cable then reading it and backing up the data. Then, once backed up you could reformat it and reinstall Windows XP.



Rgds
Jack

You could alternatively load a live CD of a Linux distribution to view files on the corrupted partition and then back up to whatever storage you like.

The advantages are that you don't have to go through any installation processes or hardware changes and there are a lot of tools available that could assist you in retrieving your data.

Ubuntu Live CD: http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/get-ubuntu/download

Backtrack: http://www.backtrack-linux.org/

Backtrack has a lot of forensic tools that could assist you but it isn't exactly a user friendly distribution.

Synapse said:

You could alternatively load a live CD of a Linux distribution to view files on the corrupted partition and then back up to whatever storage you like.

The advantages are that you don't have to go through any installation processes or hardware changes and there are a lot of tools available that could assist you in retrieving your data.

Ubuntu Live CD: http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/get-ubuntu/download

Backtrack: http://www.backtrack-linux.org/

Backtrack has a lot of forensic tools that could assist you but it isn't exactly a user friendly distribution.

Click to expand...

This sounds like a plan - just to add you can also (did this just last night) install Ubuntu to a usb stick (at least 2gb they say but Ubuntu is only 700mb) and make it bootable - this is all detailed at the same place that Synapse linked too...

thank you all very much for your inputs.