PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Use of external drive as temporary main drive.
Old 9th Jun 2010, 21:19
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aerobelly
 
Join Date: Nov 2002
Location: Tapping the Decca, wondering why it's not working.
Age: 75
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Kinda.

First requirement is to get all non-backed-up stuff off the borked drive onto flash memory. A "live" CD/DVD in the DVD drive will do that: I'd use Linux, but there may be Windows-ish "live" systems too.

After that it's a case of finding the installation discs and re-installing, then recovering personal files from the various backups.

If the cause of the initial corruption isn't known I would always fit a new disc drive (they're SO cheap now), and try to re-format and re-use the old one later.

In the past I've replaced disk drives due to "errors" that turned out to be a problem in the memory at the location that the disk drivers were loaded. So do a thorough memory test as well (google memtest 86).


mad_jocks's post has crossed with mine since starting typing this. We seem to agree that Linux is very useful at recovering Windows machines with disk problems. So useful that I avoid Windows entirely....


'b
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