Boot DOS from CD with USB support

**Beiss** · May 04, 2007, 01:50 AM

Hi

My girlfriend's computer has just died and she's blaming me for it. I've warned her that it's going downhill and that she should back up her files and reinstall windows (because, well, sometimes that needs to be done), just to be safe, but she wouldn't listen, and now she's telling me it died because I had stuff on it. Er. Anyway, I'm looking to salvage as much as possible of her hard drive. I don't know what's wrong with the computer, but I do know that you cannot trust a repairman to care about your lost data - he'll make the damned thing work but he's a lot more likely to just give you a new hard drive rather than trying to fix a broken one.

So. Her computer is a laptop, and is has no floppy drive, and none can be installed. As I've understood it, the best solution would be to:

Boot from a CD and try to copy as much as possible to a USB stick. This must be done in DOS.

Does anyone have experience with doing this? Thanks for any help!

**Gaius Baltar** · May 04, 2007, 04:59 AM

Boot from CD

Backup to an external harddrive, they are cheap now, 250 GB for about 100$ US.

**Aristocrat** · May 04, 2007, 05:53 AM

Don't laught at her, unless you want to sleep alone.

...

On the computer, if you can get it into windows using the windows cd or safe mode, back up the data on an external hard-drive or usb drive.
If the computer doesn't even turn on (IE it is actually dead dead.), you get the fun of opening up a laptop and connecting the harddrive to another computer to back it up.

**Erik** · May 04, 2007, 06:20 AM

I think the simples way is to take her hard-disk out and put it into your own PC.
What way you can copy all the data directly to your own hard-drive, which probably has a lot more space than a USB stick.
And you also don't have to worry about operating-systems.

Id the data is corrupted there is also recovery software that might save at least some of it.

ps: what's up with girlfriends always blaming us when something goes wrong?
I hate that.

**Beiss** · May 04, 2007, 07:19 AM

I'm afraid opening up her computer is beyond what she's going to let me do, and it'll probably screw up any warranty as well. Are laptop hard drives really wire-wise compatible with IDE, anyway? Can you just unplug it and plug it into a stationary machine? I thought they had a different plug or something.

The machine is not completely dead, but it's dead enough to not reliably start or run windows, not even in safe mode. Sometimes it starts, sometimes it doesn't. I'm going to try to run Knoppix on it from a CD, hopefully that will let me back stuff up. I won't buy an external hard drive just for this, and even if I did, I'd still need to get USB working under DOS. Besides, I don't think I'll need a hard drive, she doesn't have that much stuff on it. My 2GB USB stick should do the trick if I get it to work. And if I can get an external HD to work, the stick should too.

As for her blaming me - well, that's just because she doesn't know enough about the damn things to know it wasn't my fault. She blames me for lots of other things that aren't my fault, to, but that's just the way she is.

Thanks for your help.

**Erik** · May 04, 2007, 08:39 AM

Originally Posted by Beiss

I'm afraid opening up her computer is beyond what she's going to let me do

Some faith she has in her boyfriend

, and it'll probably screw up any warranty as well.

Only if you break any stickers.
I think most laptops have a special panel to access the drive bay.
Just like they have a special panel to access the memory modules.
So it's not like you'll have to completely disassemble it or anything.

Are laptop hard drives really wire-wise compatible with IDE, anyway? Can you just unplug it and plug it into a stationary machine? I thought they

Good question, I don't know.
I think SATA disks are compatible, but a (p)ATA wire is very broad so they might use a slimmed down version.
But if they aren't compatible I'm sure you can buy an adapter.

I'd still need to get USB working under DOS.

Now that you mentioned it I remember that under DOS 6.2/Windows95 USB didn't work.
Not sure if it's fixed by now, but it might mean that it's simply impossible to do what you want.

As for her blaming me - well, that's just because she doesn't know enough about the damn things to know it wasn't my fault. She blames me for lots of other things that aren't my fault, to, but that's just the way she is.

That's the way 90% of girlfriends are.
Most of my ex-girlfriends were like that at least, and I've seen the same thing with many of my friends.
It's possibly the thing I dislike the most of having a girlfriend.

**Beiss** · May 05, 2007, 05:54 AM

Ok, I've tried running Knoppix on the machine, which works fine, but it can't access the hard drive. I don't know if it's an NTFS or FAT drive but since knoppix is supposed to be able to access both kinds, and since I can't access it at all, I doubt it matters. Looks like I'll need to remove it and put it into another computer after all. But I can't even find it!

The base of the laptop has several panels, like you said, and I've been able to find one that has the same icon as the one located next to the small diode the keeps flashing when the computer loads something from the hard drive. Thing is, this panel is where the audio connectors are located. I find it difficult to believe that the hard drive and the sound card are combined.

Either way, the warranty is up in 12 days (some luck!), ending her 3-year warranty period, so I need to find a technician or something - fast. I don't think I can do this myself. Thanks for your help though.

**Erik** · May 05, 2007, 08:28 AM

Originally Posted by Beiss

The base of the laptop has several panels, like you said, and I've been able to find one that has the same icon as the one located next to the small diode the keeps flashing when the computer loads something from the hard drive.

Is the logo a cylinder?
A cylinder is the universal sign for hard drive, don't know why because hard-drives don't look anything like a cylinder, but it is.

Thing is, this panel is where the audio connectors are located. I find it difficult to believe that the hard drive and the sound card are combined.

Why not?
The "sounds card" is juts a chip on the motherboard, the sound connectors can be located anywhere.

Either way, the warranty is up in 12 days (some luck!), ending her 3-year warranty period, so I need to find a technician or something - fast. I don't think I can do this myself. Thanks for your help though.

I think if you notify them within those 12 days you are safe, even if it gets repaired after that period.

But my recommendation: find that hard disk even if you have to open every panel on the laptop.....JUST AS LONG AS YOU DON'T BREAK ANY WARRANTY SEALS.
Then connect it to your PC and copy everything to you hard-drive.
If you can't find the partition you can also make an image (ie: a single file that contains everything from that drive byte-for-byte).
There are some free programs that can do this.

Then put the drive back in and get the laptop repaired.

**Beiss** · May 06, 2007, 04:40 AM

Yep, it's a cylinder / tin can thingy. Wow, a sound card / hard drive combo. Amazing...

Anyway, her mother has a technician working for her at her job, so she's going to try to get him to do it. Fine by me - I'd rather not take any more blame than I already have.

Thanks though.