Arch Linux

krupintupple

Member

From: toronto

Registered: 2007-06-11

Posts: 29

issues resucing old hard drive.

hello all,

my ancient computer finally took a dive, and i found myself the proud owner of a brand new box - very pleased with it. however, my old box had a semi-new 300GB drive on it, and to add insult to injury, i foolishly forgot to back most of it up. it was a dual boot system, so it didn't have a typical bootloader, but when i try to swap the drive into my new machine with an arch install disk, it only allows me to reinstall the system.

i searched the archwiki and discovered these steps:

boot system with arch linux cd

-> at boot prompt do:

vmlinuz root=/dev/hda3 # 3 in case you installed there your /

machine boots up..

but unfortunately, the installation screen informs me that vmlinuz is not a valid command, or something along those lines. i'm quite confident that all i would need is a working grub and i'd easily be able to rescue my old data - most of which are irreplaceable pictures held within my picasa directory.

thanks in advance!

tomk

Forum Fellow

From: Ireland

Registered: 2004-07-21

Posts: 9,839

Re: issues resucing old hard drive.

Assuming your new box has its own hard drive, install the old hard drive alongside, as a slave. Then mount the partition(s) and copy your stuff.