Rescuing data from a windows HD

[amoda]

Hey,

A friend of mine's windows computer is giving her a real pain and won't boot up. It nearly gets to the windows screen but then gives up and dies. Assuming that there isn't any/too much damage on the HD is there any way to recover the data? Is there software that will copy her windows HD to my mac? Or will i need to install windows? What do you guys think of DataRescue II?

Thanks for any help.

 

[xUKHCx]

Depends on what you want to copy or do with the windows drive, if it is just simple recovering documents et.c before you reformat it.

However you should just be able to copy the files straight off the drive without any third party tools.

 

[amoda]

Well the problem is that I can't even get into windows. After it spends like 5secs loading it restarts the computer. So i need a piece of software that can start the copying without needing an OS installed, if that's possible. I've tried entering via safe-mode and all that but nothing works.

Btw thanks for the quick reply! Sorry it took me so long to get back to you.

 

[amoda]

Sorry for double posting but it's getting kind of urgent. Some files on the HD are needed and she needs to know if there is any chance of getting the data off the HD.

Now the HD actually spins so it seems that there is a system corruption that stops XP from loading. I've heard of something called the DD command but i'm not really sure how to use it. It seems perfect so if someone with knowledge of linux can bestow the required knowledge onto a computer newbie i would be grateful. By my understanding the DD command allows all the data from the HD to be copied and it has the ability to bypass any software errors.

 

[maestrokev]

You could have bad sectors on the hard drive.

Ever heard of SpinRite

 

[xUKHCx]

How are tyou attaching her harddrive to your mac?

As i said before the mac should be able to natively read the disk, assuming the disk mounts.

For more information on the dd command i'd look at this macosxhints page.

 

[Homer2556]

You could try loading a copy of Knoppix from CD on your friend's machine to see if you can access the drive. I'm not sure if it's got it's own cd burning software, I've not used it myself, but if it did, you may be able to copy the documents you need that way.