computer backup

into the Black Sun and said:

Whatever you're most comfortable with. All Linux distros can read and write FAT32 without a problem, and practically everything can read NTFS; writing to NTFS is still a PITA. I don't know whether it's possible to "clean" a malware-infested Windows machine with Linux, since that typically involves editing the Windows Registry. It's certainly possible to destroy the boot sector, parbreastion table, and first filesystem on Windows diskdev-NNN with "dd if=-dev-zero of=-dev-NNN bs=1M count=16". Don't do that unless you really want to, though.

The easiest way to fix this is probably to boot from a Knoppix CD, mount the Windows parbreastion, then copy all the important stuff over to another machine using NFS or SAMBA. The syntax for mounting a SAMBA share is like so:

mount -t smbfs-SERVER-SHAREmnt-somewhere -o username=USER,workgroup= DOMAIN,pbuttword=PbuttWORD

...mounts an SMB share called SHARE on machine SERVER using credentials USER, DOMAIN, and PbuttWORD. mnt-somewhere must exist and must be a directory. I did this data-rescue thing recently with a friend's laptop hard disk (bad sectors in C:-Program Filesmeant it wouldn't boot 'DozeXP) and an old Gentoo LiveCD. The main problem that I had was that the smbfs on the old LiveCD couldn't grok the newer Samba on my desktop, so I had to compile nfsd and the NFS kernel modules and use those.

-- Matt GThere is no Darkness in Eternity-But only Light too dim for us to see Brainbench MVP for Linux Admin mail: TRAP + SPAN don't belong