Personal Computers Questions

How can I recover my documents off my hard drive that had the operating system fail?

by on January 6, 2011

Q: I have a Toshiba laptop that for some reason deleted the Windows Vista operating system. Before I reinstall windows again, I want to retrieve the documents I have on the laptop. I do I get the documents off the hard drive and save them?

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One Response to “How can I recover my documents off my hard drive that had the operating system fail?”
  1.  

    I suggest using a LiveCD. This is a CD/DVD of an operating system that can be booted straight from the CD without writing to the hard drive at all.

    Two good options are UBCD for Windows or an Ubuntu Live CD.

    The Ubuntu Live CD is probably the easiest to get running. However, you can try both and see what works best for you.

    http://www.ubcd4win.com/
    https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCD

    Once you get your computer to boot with one of these, you’ll see your old hard drive listed, just navigate to the files you want and dump them to a different drive.

    Both the links above have full instructions on how to get the OSes up and running.

     

    Mark (Uber Geek) says: on January 6, 2011 at 11:55 am