How can I retrieve data from unbootable drive with Ubuntu Live?
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I've got a windows 10 machine that needs to be reloaded due to OS corruption (no hardware/disk failure). There is some files I need to retrieve, but can't seem to get them. I've tried using Hirens boot, and Ubuntu Live. In Ubuntu live, I can see the drive using the Gparted tool that is built-in Ubuntu, but I can't see it in Files aka ubuntu's version of file explorer. Maybe cause it's not mounted, I'm assuming? My next step is to plug it in my personal windows desktop, and see if I can retrieve from there. Just wanted to run it by the community real quick to see if there's an easy way to retrieve using Ubuntu Live, or any other tool.
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why not mount it in the live system?
then you'll need to mount another location to copy it to, say a USB stick, make the copy, then umount and reboot -
@dashrender said in How can I retrieve data from unbootable drive with Ubuntu Live?:
why not mount it in the live system?
Maybe something like this?
https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/mount-drive-from-command-line-ubuntu-linux/amp/
I just wanted to make sure I don’t risk altering the data. Makes sense that mounting and unmounting the drive should not cause a problem.
I know in the past, I literally just copied and paste from Ubuntu Files, which it basically mounted on it’s own. That was several years ago, and pc was windows 7, and probably on a hard disk drive. This pc has an nvme drive, not sure if that matters.
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@fredtx said in How can I retrieve data from unbootable drive with Ubuntu Live?:
This pc has an nvme drive, not sure if that matters.
That might be why it didn't auto mount the drive in this case, your version of Live might not have drivers. I guess you'll find out when you look for the device to mount.
mounting under a Linux OS shouldn't affect the drive anymore than assigning it a drive letter in Windows does (and I know that Windows did actually make a change when it letterfied (for lack of a better word) a drive, not sure it does anymore.
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@fredtx said in How can I retrieve data from unbootable drive with Ubuntu Live?:
I've got a windows 10 machine that needs to be reloaded due to OS corruption (no hardware/disk failure). There is some files I need to retrieve, but can't seem to get them. I've tried using Hirens boot, and Ubuntu Live. In Ubuntu live, I can see the drive using the Gparted tool that is built-in Ubuntu, but I can't see it in Files aka ubuntu's version of file explorer. Maybe cause it's not mounted, I'm assuming? My next step is to plug it in my personal windows desktop, and see if I can retrieve from there. Just wanted to run it by the community real quick to see if there's an easy way to retrieve using Ubuntu Live, or any other tool.
If the drive or filesystem is bad you might be SOL... Grab a live USB of the distro with the most recent kernel you can find (in the hopes that it's got the necessary drivers) and see what it can detect / read. Good luck.
--EDIT --
If it's bitlocker encrypted it might be easier to pop the drive into another win10 machine to copy the data over (assuming that you have the bitlocker key somewhere) -
@notverypunny depending on how bitlocker was configured can't you simply supply the password (assuming tpm wasn't used)
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@dustinb3403 Honestly not sure. I haven't played with bitlocker beyond enabling it for our company machines and having to dig into AD to get the key when a machine won't boot and asks for it. I have a heathy skepticism with regards to microsoft's implementation of anything. They don't seem to be as bad as apple, but they tend to work best within their own ecosystem.
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Looks like all I needed to do was mount the hard drive.
Mounted, and transferred the data over the network via smb://windows share
Was some additional steps than what I did previously, but it worked like a charm.
Thanks!
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@fredtx usually the process is far simpler than you'd expect.
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@fredtx
Good to hear
