I was searching eBay (only half serious) for data recovery solutions and came upon some selling a CD with something called Knoppix on it and saying that it could be used for data recovery on crashed hard drives. After a little searching, I see that I can download and burn to a CD myself. But I am not sure if Knoppix is something that will be useful to my plight or not.....

I have a Sony Vaio laptop that recently crashed and when I turn it on, it now says OPERATING SYSTEM NOT FOUND. I desperately need to get some of the files off of my computer but would RATHER not spend the $400 to $500 (or more) to send to data recovery places if I can help it!

So can I use Knoppix to boot up and get access to the files on my hard drive? What is the best method for doing this? I tried a search and the FAQs, but didn't find much. Any help would be appreciated! Thanks!