Instructions to Restore Files from a Windows Filesystem using Ubuntu Live CD

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.

1. Download the latest version of Ubuntu 32-bit ISO image from the following location:

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

2. Burn the ISO image onto a CD or DVD so you can try running Ubuntu Linux from the CD (Live CD option)

3. 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

4. Once the OS boots up: launch the partition editor

   

5. 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.

6. Launch system terminal (command line interface)

   

7. Mount the Windows filesystem using the "mount" command.

   

8. Finally navigate to the mounted filesystem using the graphical user interface.

   
   
   
   
   

9. 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.

10. Backup your files from the Windows filesystem to the USB filesystem