Re: Can Debian Backup ntfs File System?
On Sun, 28 Nov 2010 17:22:17 +0100, Axel Freyn wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 28, 2010 at 03:31:48PM +0000, Camaleón wrote:
>> On Sun, 28 Nov 2010 08:54:49 -0500, Thomas H. George wrote:
>>
>> > Situation: My daughter works for a bank and must use Microsoft to
>> > work at home. Yesterday the system would not boot - no safe mode, no
>> > nothing, just return to loading bios.
>>
>> (...)
>>
>> > Is there any chance of recovering usable files before we wipe out her
>> > hard drive?
>>
>> I would try with plain copy/paste.
>>
>> If that also fails, put the disk into external USB case, attach it to
>> another windows xp (or later) box and perform there the common file
>> system diagnostic tasks (scan disk and defrag).
> But that is extremly dangerous...: you risk to loose/destroy
> informations on the damaged filesystem (nobody guarantees, that scandisk
> is not destroying data...). And especially defrag: this WILL destroy
> data, which are in lost files (=sectors of the harddisk which seem to be
> free according to the file system...).
(...)
I've never heard neither seen that before and have worked with ntfs
volumes during many years. In fact, I've managed to "restore to live"
windows systems that were unable to boot up by following that procedure
(even an unexpected shutdown can make the OS to be unbootable -system
files tend to become easily corrupted- and checking the file system
structure solves the issue).
Scan disk (chkdsk) and defrag are the standard and recommended tools for
dealing with MS file systems problems. Maybe they cannot solve the
problem but won't aggravate it either. And before "wiping out" the hard
disk, I think it is at least worth a try.
Greetings,
--
Camaleón
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