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format with some save?

Posted: Wed Jun 15, 2005 11:50 am
by shiznatix
i desperatly need to format my harddrive but i want to backup 1 folder that is on my computer. is there a way i can partition (if nessicary) my harddrive without formating the current partition? i would save the data on some other computer but the folder i need to save is like 20 gigs and i don't have the time/space on another computer. what would be the best way to save this while deleteing everything else?

Posted: Wed Jun 15, 2005 1:26 pm
by timvw
Just get yourself a bootdisk... boot from that... and delete everything, but that folder...

offcourse you might want to surf around, and find out how easy that can be done ;) I mean, lookup how the del.exe switches work etc... It will save you a lot of time ;)

Posted: Wed Jun 15, 2005 1:41 pm
by shiznatix
a boot disk!? like those old floppy disks? i dont have one of those and if you mean a cd like windows cd it won't let you save just 1 folder it just deletes everything so thats not a option. iv asked around and done some searching but i havn't come up with anything solid yet. any other sugestions?

Posted: Wed Jun 15, 2005 2:16 pm
by timvw
you can make a boot-cdrom too... and yes, you can delete everyting but one folder..... but you can't do it when you boot windows... because then there will be some files in %win% etc that are required and/or locked...

so, get yourself a boot disk/cdrom/whatever... and start deleting files :p

Posted: Wed Jun 15, 2005 2:55 pm
by Chris Corbyn
Another option is if you have another 20 Gig spare. Get Partition Magic (6,7 or 8) shrink your current partition, create a fresh 20GB one. Move the files to that and then blitz the old one. Partition magic doesn't delete data for these sorts of things.... it warns you if you're about to do something critical like that too.

Posted: Wed Jun 15, 2005 3:30 pm
by shiznatix
partition magic costs supra amounts of money (unless you have a free trial link). but timwv can you elaborate more? when i put in my windows cd it runs the boot but it only has options to repaire windows or delete partition then create new partitions out of the deleted one then format certain partitions without knowing what data is on what. how can you go about deleting? am i just being stupid? (i dont think so because i have installed windows literally about 200 times no joke)

Posted: Wed Jun 15, 2005 10:20 pm
by neophyte
Knoppix Linux -- You can boot it from disk and use QT Parted (software that runs from the disk) to partition your hard drive. I love Linux. Be careful with it though. It's not the easiest thing in the world to use. I'm not sure you can resize a partition with it. But it is free. I'd seriously try to find some way to back up your data even if takes 100 cdrs. Partitioning your hard disk is serious buisness. One minute everything is fine the next -- bye bye data!

Posted: Thu Jun 16, 2005 4:22 am
by Chris Corbyn
neophyte wrote:Partitioning your hard disk is serious buisness. One minute everything is fine the next -- bye bye data!
Tell me about it. I completely screwed a hard disk about a year agao. I'd tried resizing a partition (the first primary) and it crashed halfway through (I don't remember the error but I think it was a space issue - tried moving a large file with nowhere to go I think). The disk would no longger boot and nothing (not even from linux) could read the partition. I thought "Oh heck I'll delete that partition and start a fresh.... ". All seemed OK but then I rebooted and the BIOS showed at as something along the lines of "£$^&^*~@@:~*&" :P and then I wouldn't go any further. Even fdisk crashed when trying to read it. Took me ages to find a solution. I had to download at DOS tool called CLEARHDD.EXE... it basically flattens the disk right the way across (I guess it's low-level formatting?). It put my disk back to a "Just Purchased" kind of condition but obviously... all data was lost throught the course of all this.

Golden rule.... backup to tape or CD or another HDD (whatever you can) before going ahead with something major.

Posted: Thu Jun 16, 2005 5:41 am
by shiznatix
many thanks for the ideas, i found a computer at my work that has like 100 gigs of free space so all my files are backed up safley, now off to the formating! yay