copying files and dirs in xp recovery console

[torledo]

Afternoon all...

 

i've just had to go into the recovery console of an optilpex GX520 that keeps rebooting and appears to also have a corrupt system registry

 

basically i'm just trying to hook up a usb drive to get the files off the c: drive before i wipe the thing. i can see the contents of the c: drive fine but i can't use the copy command as it doesn't support use of wildcards and copying of dirs....there is no xcopy command available with the recovery console so i'm a bit stumped. There's no other way to access the contents of the hard drive. OS is screwed so not even so much as 'safe mode' so i'm using a winxp cd and recovery console to access the contents. But it's a bit pointless if all i can do is copy individual files.

 

Any suggestions ?

[cookie_monster]

Download a live CD like Knoppix or Ubuntu and copy everything to a USB drive.

 

http://www.knoppix.org/

 

http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download

[Jona]

Or the ultimate boot cd - http://www.ubcd4win.com/ should allow you to boot into a cut down windows environment to copy stuff around, etc.

[Michael]

Or alternatively, extract the hard drive and install it in another system as a secondary drive. Then copy the required files

[conehead]

Or alternatively, extract the hard drive and install it in another system as a secondary drive. Then copy the required files

 

To be honest I usually have usb hard drive caddies for standard and laptop hard drives that need file recovering but a Bart disc is good for when on the move

 

http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/download/

[torledo]

thankyou all for you're excellent suggestions;

 

@michael - i thought i'd try you're suggestion first, unfortunately the rotters at Dell have only included one sata port on the gx520 mainboard of the second gx520 i was intending to use to recover the data, and i haven't got any spare machines with sata ports.... is it possible to get a one-to-many sata cable for hooking up two sata hard drives on the same channel. Or is sata strictly a one to one arrangement ?

[Michael]

You can only connect one SATA device per port/channel, there are no adapters. The easiest solution is to purchase an external enclosure like one of these.

 

You can then connect it to any computer with a USB port and copy the data.