Using Linux to rescue a NTFS partition

[Nod]

From: http://www.howtoforge.com/ntfs-disk-recovery

1 Situation

Mary, the daughter of a friend is in college: her Windows XP laptop constantly reboots and, we suspect, has a bad hard drive. The system will boot a live CD (Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala Desktop), and data on the hard drive can be read. During boot, the live CD identifies disk errors and tries unsuccessfully to repair them.

2 Backup

Securing the information on the hard disk is priority #1. We don't know what's wrong with the disk, so we need to make a backup disk image before we attempt a repair. From a command prompt a directory is created at /media/server on the laptop's live cd environment to mount a drive share to back up the laptop hard disk.

The server has previously been configured with an NFS share, but the live CD doesn't have the NFS client installed. Fortunately the Ubuntu live CD can download and install programs from the apt repository.

Rest of solution at link.

 

[Lino]

The other day at work, I had a machine that I needed to access all the data on. However Windows could not boot up or shutdown correctly, resulting in the NTFS partition being locked. I happily used a OpenSuse live CD and did a force remount. Got all of the data off the drive. My point with this? It is amazing how useful and helpful Linux can be with NTFS recovery.

 

[submarine]

Kinda same story here - had an old laptop with some valuable info on it; forget passwords to access Laptop. No problem for Linux, booted of CD, accessed hard drive with no problems and copied data onto USB flash stick - find a Linux boot cd very handy!

 

[kingrob]

I always have an Ubuntu live cd with me...it's a life saver.

Just kinda makes me giggle that Microsoft still calls it "New Technology File System". Should be OTFS "Old Technology File System".