Windows users who have not interacted with any kind of UNIX or Linux distribution before are the target audience of this HOW-TO blog post.
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Download the latest version of Ubuntu 32-bit ISO image from the following location:
http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download -
Burn the ISO image onto a CD or DVD so you can try running Ubuntu Linux from the CD (Live CD option)
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On the target system (running Windows or any other OS but does not recognize the disk drive(s) containing Windows FS) boot Linux from the CD or DVD that you burned
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Once the OS boots up: launch the partition editor
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Look for NTFS, FAT or FAT32 filesystems and note down the corresponding partition names.
In the example, /dev/sda1 and /dev/sda2 are the Windows filesystems.
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Launch system terminal (command line interface)
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Mount the Windows filesystem using the "mount" command.
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Finally navigate to the mounted filesystem using the graphical user interface.
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Insert an USB flash device
Ubuntu recognizes the USB drive and mounts it automatically. Type "df -h" on the command line terminal and look for "NO NAME". "NO NAME" filesystem is the USB file system.
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Backup your files from the Windows filesystem to the USB filesystem
