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So someone's laptop "broke" and won't switch on (yes I've tried everything
but nothing works) and they need some files off it. I've got the HD out,
it's a 2.5" SATA with standard connections. Only problem is it's encrypted
using 3rd party software. If I connect the drive to another machine and
boot it I can get past the decryption window and it starts to boot windows
off the drive but then blue screens (I suspect due to radically different
hardware). Trying to boot in safe mode (and all the other options from the
F8 menu) does the same.
Any ideas how I can get any files off this drive? What I really need is
some way in the F8 window to say "now run a different windows installation
from a different drive" - that doesn't seem to be possible though.
There is an option in the encryption software screen to boot from floppy
rather than the HD, so maybe I'll end up buying a floppy drive and trying
that way. Any ideas how to make a floppy that just runs my Vista
installation? (or gives me command line to copy files between NTFS drives?).
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scott wrote:
> So someone's laptop "broke" and won't switch on (yes I've tried
> everything but nothing works) and they need some files off it. I've got
> the HD out, it's a 2.5" SATA with standard connections. Only problem is
> it's encrypted using 3rd party software. If I connect the drive to
> another machine and boot it I can get past the decryption window and it
> starts to boot windows off the drive but then blue screens (I suspect
> due to radically different hardware). Trying to boot in safe mode (and
> all the other options from the F8 menu) does the same.
>
> Any ideas how I can get any files off this drive?
Ouch.
If it were me, I'd probably try taking an image of the entire drive, and
then trying to find a way to decrypt it. But I don't suppose for a
moment that this 3rd party software happens to offer offline decryption
as a feature. (Indeed, given what the software is supposed to do, I
guess that would be an "anti-feature"...)
I don't suppose it stays up long enough for the network stack to be
initialised so you can grab the files over the network?
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On Thu, 03 Dec 2009 11:40:44 +0100, scott <sco### [at] scott com> wrote:
> Any ideas how to make a floppy that just runs my Vista installation? (or
> gives me command line to copy files between NTFS drives?).
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/4622
http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/grubconf-for-windows-vista-or-xp-dual-boot
--
FE
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scott wrote:
>
> There is an option in the encryption software screen to boot from floppy
> rather than the HD, so maybe I'll end up buying a floppy drive and
> trying that way. Any ideas how to make a floppy that just runs my Vista
> installation? (or gives me command line to copy files between NTFS
> drives?).
>
After solving this, make sure to remind your customer of backups :).
-Aero
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Eero Ahonen wrote:
> After solving this, make sure to remind your customer of backups :).
Yeah, but... it's a laptop, isn't it? By definition, it's usually far,
far away from anywhere you could make a backup copy. ;-)
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Invisible wrote:
>
> Yeah, but... it's a laptop, isn't it? By definition, it's usually far,
> far away from anywhere you could make a backup copy. ;-)
Ummm.. no? Laptops usually tend to eg, *come home* with theier owners
etc and one can back them up. And you know what else exists? The...
*damdamdamdamdam*... INTERNET! One can back the laptop up *over the
network*. So, backups are far from impossible - it's just people don't
realize that just they might need them some day.
-Aero
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> Ummm.. no? Laptops usually tend to eg, *come home* with theier owners
> etc and one can back them up. And you know what else exists? The...
> *damdamdamdamdam*... INTERNET! One can back the laptop up *over the
> network*. So, backups are far from impossible - it's just people don't
> realize that just they might need them some day.
This is only vaild in theory. Sorry. The fastest DSL I can get has an
upstream of 384 kbit/s (48 kB/s).
Try to backup 40 GB this way - it will take about 10 days.
I would suggest an external HDD for backup.
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TC wrote:
>
> This is only vaild in theory. Sorry. The fastest DSL I can get has an
> upstream of 384 kbit/s (48 kB/s).
>
> Try to backup 40 GB this way - it will take about 10 days.
Well yes, obviously incremental backups are more than reasonable choice
on this level, I still wouldn't call it simply impossible.
> I would suggest an external HDD for backup.
So would I, actually. And yes, that also can be carried along with the
laptop itself (remembering that Andy stated backing laptop up as
impossible, 'cause it's moving around the globe continously), I didn't
even think about that at first.
-Aero
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>> There is an option in the encryption software screen to boot from floppy
>> rather than the HD, so maybe I'll end up buying a floppy drive and
>> trying that way. Any ideas how to make a floppy that just runs my Vista
>> installation? (or gives me command line to copy files between NTFS
>> drives?).
Thanks for all the suggestions, actually I found an old PC with a floppy
drive, so installed that in my desktop machine and hooked up the encrypted
drive. I told the encryption software to boot from floppy and then tried a
variety of boot disks.
Finally I found "The All In One Boot Floppy" to be most helpful, it allowed
me to boot my Vista partition without restarting, but unfortunately Vista
still saw the drive as encrypted (I guess it somehow bypasses whatever
decryption software was installed). Anyway, as the user only needed a
handful of files I could use the NTFS4DOS command line tools to copy over
the needed files to a memory stick - very slowly. However it didn't work
for some files (I don't know why) so I found another program called NTFS
Reader that copied them over even slower (about 1 hour for a 100 MB file!!).
It worked though.
> After solving this, make sure to remind your customer of backups :).
Hehe, this was a colleague, and actually him having made a backup 2 weeks
ago is pretty unusual. Maybe it's just my company, or the Japanese in
general, but all secondees that come here seem to have the mentality of
storing everything only on their PC for "security" - it's a bit screwed, is
it bad for me to secretly hope one of them loses everything one day?
The issue is that most people have their Outlook pst files as their most
valuable posession, and to backup the pst files you need to quit Outlook -
not many people here like having Outlook turned off for 30 mins while
several Gbs of files are copied to the server each day.
Geez, this isn't even meant to be my job, it's just the IT people are far
away and don't really do much.
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scott wrote:
> The issue is that most people have their Outlook pst files as their most
> valuable posession, and to backup the pst files you need to quit Outlook
Not true. Just make a shadow copy, and back up the shadow copy. It's pretty
easy.
> - not many people here like having Outlook turned off for 30 mins while
> several Gbs of files are copied to the server each day.
What, they don't go to sleep?
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Human nature dictates that toothpaste tubes spend
much longer being almost empty than almost full.
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