help with the recovery of a head crash with a MS ntfs file system.

[NoOp]

On 02/11/2010 12:59 PM, Knapp wrote:
> Hello, I have a nice working Kubuntu install with lots of extra storage space.
> I also have my relatives laptop that has ALL their baby pictures that
> were never backed up!
> Their kid tossed the computer onto the floor and now the drive is dead
> with read errors and the MS recovery disk can't help.
> 
> As I understand it the best think I can do is boot the computer with a
> live CD and copy the small HD over to my computer with the router. I
> have no clue about the best way to set this up on my computer. Any
> pointers on this basic one time use networking?
> 
> Second question. What should I do to the laptop to get the most info
> off the drive? Gparted does see that the drive has ntfs and that there
> are errors. That is all that I can get. Should I try DDrecovery or
> what?
> 
> I have never done anything like this before so don't be afraid to tell
> me all the stupid details and point to good links.
> 
> Thanks!!
> 

dd as others have suggested is good. I would also recommend:

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

And if you are technically capable, go and get a usb drive adaptor
something along the lines of:
http://www.vantecusa.com/front/product/view_detail/266
There are others, this is just one that I own/use & works well (for me).

Pull the drive, connect to the adaptor, and then do the
copying/dd/whatever. Reason being is if you leave the drive in the
laptop while doing the copying, you may find that whatever damage was
done to the laptop overall may further damage the drive (hardware
shorts, voltage spikes, etc., etc). I've found it's much safer (again if
you are techically capable) to pull the drive before the hardware
surrounding it can possibly do any further damage to the drive.