An article posted to Linux Journal today reminded me of a recent incident where Linux saved the day. “How Linux Saved My Files and My Job” tells the story of a Windows user who used a Linux boot floppy to recover data from a damaged NTFS partition. My dad and I did the same thing a few months ago.
It was the end of my Thanksgiving break, and I was preparing to fly back to Berkeley when I received a call from my father. His laptop’s hard drive had failed, and he had no backups. His company’s data was on his hard drive, and being unable to recover it was not an option.
Before he called me, my dad contacted a few data recovery firms, and each one had provided quotes in the thousands of dollars. Because the cost was prohibitive, my dad decided to give me a call. I agreed to help, and he brought his laptop home immediately.
On the first boot, the laptop’s BIOS failed to recognize the drive. After a little bit of shaking (really, it works!) and a few more reboots, I was able to get the BIOS to recognize the hard drive, but Windows XP was unable to completely boot. I didn’t have a Windows XP CD, so I couldn’t boot into the Recovery Console - not that it would have helped.
I ran to my bags and started unpacking; I needed to get my CD wallet. As a hardcore Linux user, I always carry a copy of Knoppix with me. I quickly extracted my copy of Knoppix and placed it into my dad’s laptop. I plugged my dad’s laptop into the home network, crossed my fingers, and booted the computer. The BIOS didn’t recognize the drive. Drats!
I turned off the laptop and tried again. Another failure. After a few more reboots, I was finally able to get the BIOS to recognize the hard drive. I mounted the NTFS partition in Knoppix, connected to my local FTP server, and copied the entire hard drive to my home directory. As an additional backup, I un-mounted the partition and used dd to dump an image of the drive. I moved to another computer on my network and showed my dad how to access my home directory using FTP. He copied over the files he needed immediately and burned them to a few CD-Rs. Linux had saved the day (and my dad’s data)!
Because of his experiences that day, my dad learned a couple things. He now uses rsync to backup his data on a daily basis. He also witnessed the power of Linux and is thinking about moving the company’s file servers to Linux.
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