Any Chance of Saving Data on Active Partition after M/B Change?

[UseItNow]

Hi folks, am finally getting around to sorting out the PC fault over this weekend, touch wood as started here: http://forums.hexus.net/help-technic...t-no-post.html

However, my query is that would it be possible to save some or all of the data stored on the active boot OS partition after a motherboard change as per the thread title?

It would save my younger sibling a few days headache and panic, his coursework was saved on the partition, he should have backed it up on the pen drive or the other partitions! He is reading this as I type!

Any way would it be possible to use something like EASEUS Partition Manager Professional (don't know if it has a feature as such) to change the active partition to not boot?
Any other software that will do this also? Is it even possible? I presume if it was done then XP would not boot from the inactive partition and I could save the data, reformat the partition later without difficulties?

If this is not possible could I boot up the system with a Linux LiveCD, such as Knoppix and move the data from the partition to another partition, please note all partitions are NTFS. Would this be a problem with the LiveCD.

Please forgive my ignorance towards my lack of knowledge on Linux, I'm a novice who touched it a long time ago and haven't had the chance/time to again, SORRY!

Would appreciate all the help I can get in salvaging my younger siblings work, thanks!

[TooNice]

I am not sure about LiveCD. But assuming the HD is in perfect working order, and you do not have another to boot from, I've had success using one of the Linux bootdisk (not sure which) using the Ultimate Boot CD.

[Arimus]

The live CD option will work well - think both Knoppix and a number of others offer RO support for NTFS (and can be made to offer RW but in your instance read-only is probably safer)... either copy the data to another HDD or burn to cd/dvd depending on how much is needed.

[peterb]

Another vote for the live CD route (everyone who tinkers wit computers should have one IMHO) Anyone will do, personally I find Knoppix as good as any as it has quite good hardware compatability. Boot irt up, copy the files that you need off the disk and off you go.

Other alternative is to get a new disk - reisnastll the OS on it, then add the old disk back to the system and access the files that way.

Hint - for the future, make a separate partition for your data file (in windows a different physical drive, in Linux a separate partition for /home )

[UseItNow]

Thank you folks for your replies, presumed would be alright with the LiveCD.

Peter, there are separate partitons on the drive itself, it's just that my sibling decided to save all the work to the boot drive although being told otherwise. With regards to getting a second drive, would be wasted as the space would be too much.

[Funkstar]

Is this not over complicating things a little?

How about booting to safe mode and then copying the file to the right partition?

Or even Safemode command prompt and using a few command lines.

The times I've had to do this it worked well enough to do what I wanted.

[UseItNow]

Is this not over complicating things a little?

How about booting to safe mode and then copying the file to the right partition?

Or even Safemode command prompt and using a few command lines.

The times I've had to do this it worked well enough to do what I wanted.

So this should work with a G31 chipset motherboard although SATA drivers for a P35 chipset motherboard were installed before the failure without causing software corruption if I booted into SAFE MODE?

If so, great, many thanks!

[Funkstar]

you wouldn't care if it killed Windows in the long run though, all you want to do it get it to a state so you can copy the required files off the boot partition. Once this is done you can then go and re-install windows.

Though if you have gone that far and it works, try going into device manager and uninstalling pretty much everything you can. Then re-boot in normal mode and see if you can get it running again. would be a good experiment. You couldnæt do this with Win95-Win2k, but I believe you can have a certain amount of success with XP. Vista may be even better at this kind of thing as well. The drver models and registry have become a lot more robust since they were first implimented.

[UseItNow]

Guess what?

It dawned on me that I had the Paragon HDD Manager so could use the bootable disk to backup the files needed from the boot partition to another, worked!

Anyway, Funkstar I tried booting into Safe Mode yesterday, it BSOD'ed me!

Knoppix gave me a bit of headache in trying to set the write permissions for writing to the NTFS partition. Could someone point it out to me on how to do this for future reference?

Thanks to all again!

[jim]

I'd use UBCD4Win personally instead just for the sake of the nice gui, although it does take longer to load as a consequence, just a thought for the future.

[Funkstar]

Anyway, Funkstar I tried booting into Safe Mode yesterday, it BSOD'ed me!

Fair enough, would be worth the 5 min in takes, just in case

What about Safemode command prompt? Or there is the recovery console which you can boot into from the installation CD.

[oolon]

I find having a USB enclosure lying around is always useful, that way I can take a no booting drive and connect it to a machine that does work. This is also a good way for nailing persistent virii as they don't get a chance to start and hide themselves.

[UseItNow]

Guess what?

It dawned on me that I had the Paragon HDD Manager so could use the bootable disk to backup the files needed from the boot partition to another, worked!

I typed that while I put it on and left it to do the backup but going back to it found that it had crashed, attempted twice, crashed at the same stage.

What about Safemode command prompt? Or there is the recovery console which you can boot into from the installation CD.

Guess what?
Tried Safe Mode with Command Prompt and all but it hit me that I could possibly do a reinstall/repair on the OS thereby eliminating the previous P35 Chipsets drivers (ICH9R), however without possible data loss. YES, SUCCESS, backed up all the data onto another partition after the repair!

I'd use UBCD4Win personally instead just for the sake of the nice gui, although it does take longer to load as a consequence, just a thought for the future.

Will keep in mind, thanks.

[Funkstar]

Guess what?
Tried Safe Mode with Command Prompt and all but it hit me that I could possibly do a reinstall/repair on the OS thereby eliminating the previous P35 Chipsets drivers (ICH9R), however without possible data loss. YES, SUCCESS, backed up all the data onto another partition after the repair!

Excellent.

People are too quick to jump on LiveCDs or buy other software when you can often just get away with a bit of lateral thinking.