Posted on February 20th, 2010It’s really bad when you have all your important data and documents on one computer and then, one beautiful day, the operating system just decides to stop booting. For your information, this happens not only with Windows, but with Mac OS X, too; and I’m not even talking about Linux, where one deleted file can cause all the system to crash (though it’s much easier to restore/reinstall than the other two).
So, when it happens, you can’t access your files and you can’t work. The only thing left to do is reinstall the OS. But what if you need the files, fast?
There is a very good solution. Unfortunately, it will not work if your computer’s operating system is already broken, but I hope you have a spare computer (and you’re reading this on it now). The other thing you’ll need is an USB flash drive, preferably bigger than the size of the data you need to copy or an online backup account (though the latter will be very slow and you’ll still need a 1GB flash drive).
After you have these, you can follow the steps below to get your files off the broken PC (and copy them to another one or just leave them on the flash drive). Basically, you’ll use a Linux LiveUSB (the operating system runs straight from the USB drive, no need to install it) to start your computer and copy your files to the flash drive.
1. Insert your flash drive and format it, then download UNetbootin from http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/ and run the program (you don’t need to install it). Select Ubuntu (the best Linux OS, it works perfectly), select a version (8.04 or lower is best for old computers made before 2007, 9.04 and higher is for newer ones), make sure your flash drive is selected below and click OK. The utility will automatically download and install Ubuntu Linux to your USB drive (I assume your Internet connection speed is 1mb/s or higher).
2. After it’s finished, click “restart now”. Don’t unplug the USB drive. You should go into BIOS and check that the USB drive has priority (is the first on the list in a tab that’s named “Boot priority” or something like that). Press ESC and select save settings. Now at restart, your computer will boot from the USB drive into Ubuntu Linux. It isn’t much different from Windows. Click on “Places->Computer” and it’ll open your computer. Now, your files are located on a hard drive labeled “XX GB media”, just double click it and copy what you need to “Filesystem”, which is your flash drive.
3. After you copied the files, all you need to do is click the power button in the top right corner and select “Shut Down”, then wait a few seconds until it says “press Enter to shutdown” and press Enter (you could also just unplug the flash drive after you copied your stuff, but you’d risk damaging it). Now you can copy them to another computer or have them safely stored until you reinstall the operating system.
An alternative would be to insert a blank DVD and select “CD/DVD Creator” in Ubuntu. This would allow you to copy your files from the hard drive to one or more DVD’s or CD’s, but you’d still have to have at least 5 GB free on the flash drive for the disc burner cache. A second alternative is opening Firefox in Ubuntu and copying your files to an online backup account (at Dropbox, Box.net, Carbonite or other similar service). A free or trial one will suffice if you plan on downloading them somewhere else immediately. The drawback in this case is that it might take a lot of time to upload your data, depending on your connection speed and the size of the files.
I hope this small tutorial will help you when you need it. The best way to avoid having to do any of the above is maintaining backup copies on DVD’s, a flash drive, external hard drive or remote server/backup account (Microsoft’s SkyDrive could do it, too).