Data Recovery

[Lewie]

Hi all.
I came across this site after trying to find out how to recover data from my daughters laptop after I did the following
I wanted to test a laptop HDD from a Acer Aspire 5738Z running Vista.
My daughters laptop is the same model running Windows 7.
I put the HDD I wanted testing in to my daughters laptop.
It booted fine so I swapped them back.
When I booted my daughters laptop it was showing the user accounts from the other HDD??
I rebooted, it wanted to run a checkdisc but I pressed a key to bypass it.
It booted and all was well, there were the users that should be there.
I switched it off.
My daughter turned it on some time later and it ran a checkdisc showing thousands of files flying by on the screen.
Many mentioned 'orphaned files'.
Since it did this I haven't been able to get into the laptop.
It boots, the welcome screen appears but there are no user names, no way of logging in.
It just has a blue language select icon top left, a icon bottom left to do with options for ease of access, the shut down/restart icon bottom right and the 'Windows 7 Home Premium' logo accross the bottom.
I've tried using F8, repair, system restore, safe mode, no luck.
I can get a command prompt, don't know if there is any way of getting in from there?
I'm stumped, I need to recover data before any clean install and was wondering if you Linux guys could help??
Any help much appreciated.

[Harry Kuhman]

As you seem to already know, seeing the users for the hard disk that is NOT in the laptop doesn't make much sense. I looked at the Acer website, could find that model number, but clicking it only gives me a blank page with no information. The only way that I can figure what you describe could be happening would be if you were using some sort of "ready boost" flash drive to help with booting (and that drive stored the bogus users). As far as I can tell from reviews of that model Acer, it doesn't have any such magic feature built in, and I would expect that you knew not to use a Win 7 ready boost drive while you were booting a vista hard disk, but unless something like that happened I don't have any idea on what caused this.

I'm not a Win 7 user, so there may be things that you can still do to recover Win 7 that I have no knowledge of. Don't rush to do any of what I say below before you rule out a more simple fix.

Knoppix (and other Live Linux CDs and DVDs) likely can still read the hard disk and allow you to recover data. There are many ways that you could do this, depending on how much you need to recover and what resources you have available to you. Here are some ways that this can be approached:

1) A FAT formatted flash drive can be used to hold files. Mount the drive read/write and copy the needed files to it. Be sure to unmount it before removing it from the Linux system.

2) You could write the files to CD or DVD. (You may find this easier with Knoppix 5.x than with 6.x versions). One complication to this is you can't write to optical disk while running from the same booted optical disc drive, so you either need two drives (unlikely on a laptop) or enough memory to use the "toram" boot option to copy the disc to ram and free up the drive.

3) you could e-mail the files to yourself, or transfer them to any internet storage location (such as an FTP server or a site dedicated to file storage).

4) The way that I often use is to transfer the files to another Windows machine on the local network. I like to use FTP to do this, and install a free Windows FTP server on the target system, then use Konquror or a browser as the FTP client on the Linux system (I expect you could also use native Linux FTP clients, but I have not done it that way).

Good luck.

[Lewie]

Hi Harry.
No, no fancy gizzmos just a straight swap in and back again.
I couldn't belive what I was seeing when the Vista drive welcome screen appeared!! Sounds like a first.

In point 4 if I used something like Knoppix are you saying I could use my local network to transfer the fies to my desktop pc??
If so what is FTP and is there a guide on how to do it??
Cheers

[Harry Kuhman]

Yup, I was saying that, as long as Knoppix can read the drive, you should be able to use your local network to transfer the files to another Windows system and save them there.

FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol, and is one of the oldest ways to transfer files across a network (although far from the only way). You should find plenty of information with a simple Google search. And before you even ask, no, I can't recommend a specific Windows FTP server, the one that I have used is no longer available on the web; I've seen a few others that I want to try out, but have not had occasion to yet. And I don't know which might run or not run under Vista or Win 7, as I don't use them. But a Google search should find you plenty of free FTP servers for Windows (and many that are not free and no better than those that are), it's just a matter of reading up and finding one that you like.

By the way, if you are networking wirelessly, using the WLAN may depend on if Knoppix has your particular hardware driver. I would do this with a wired connection, you don't need to be resolving any wireless network connection issues while fighting with everything else.

[Lewie]

So can I not just plug a network cable from laptop to pc?
Why is a seperate FTP needed?
My head says ( it says many daft things so bear with me) I install Knoppix or something else ( I have a cd with something called Ubuntu, any good?)
This will allow me (hopefully) to see the contents of the hdd.
ALL I have to do then is network it across, job done!!
Simple huh?

[Harry Kuhman]

Not sure why on earth you would want to just plug a cable from the laptop to the desktop. Don't you have a router? (if not my advice would be to get one, for many reasons, mainly safety on the Internet). If you connect a cable directly between two computers it can work, but there are issues: you either need a special "cross over" cable, or at least one of the two network interfaces needs to be "auto-sensing". In addition, if you are not going through a router, which does automatic DHCP network configuration, you would need to manually configure network parameters on each system for things like IP address and network mask. So it can be done, but if you have to ask I would suggest just connecting through a typical network router.

As to FTP, read up about it, starting with a few Google searches. There is plenty of information on the Internet, I don't have the time or inclination to write up a personal lesson on FTP. And I'm not even clear what you are asking when you say "Why is a seperate FTP needed?".

My advice is DO NOT INSTALL KNOPPIX OR ANY OTHER LINUX SYSTEM TO RESOLVE THIS ISSUE. Doing so would only make things much worse. Knoppix is a live CD (or DVD) and will run right from optical disc without installing anything. That is the best way to recover files from a hard disk that can no longer boot (shy of installing the hard disk in a computer that can boot as an additional drive, which may also be an option, but isn't what you asked).

[chah]

Hi Lewie,

Do you have a spare external portable HDD lying around that can hold files from your daughter's HDD?

If so, you can try booting the computer (with the damaged HDD) to knoppix from the live-CD (nothing is installed in this process). After booting, plug the external HDD into a USB port, open a command line window and type:
$ sudo fdisk -l

What does the program print? Once we know which storage devices are on your system, and how they're partitioned, we can try to copy files from the damaged HDD to the external HDD, which you should hopefully be able to access from windows. After that, it sounds like you might need to reinstall Windows 7 on your daughter's laptop internal HDD, and copy files back from the external portable HDD.

[Lewie]

Hey Harry calm down, i'm getting on a bit, of course I have a router and now you mention it it seems like a good idea. :)

The bit about Knoppix not needing to be installed is good news.
That's what put me off about Ubuntu, I think you have to install that and I thought there would be no going back so I can try Knoppix without worry of further grief.


chah.
Unfortunately I don't have a external HDD, just a pc and another laptop and of course the other S-ATA HDD that is at the centre of my issue.

[Lewie]

Harry, just found this [a link to an external site]

Like you said, would be good to try a repair first.
Just not sure if this would just attempt a repair or write something to disc and wipe data.
What's your take on it??

[Harry Kuhman]

My take is that I don't know enough to trust it. And I removed the link from the post, so as to not take the chance of promoting some malware or worse site. I was hoping that some Win7 user might have a simple tip on some basic action that you could take to coax Win7 into booting up past the complaints (such as safe mode in xp). But I would be extremely cautious about what seems like it could be worse than the current problem.