How to Back Up Data From a Computer That Won't Boot

Back Up Data From a Computer

While you see there’s nothing visible on your Computer, you feel that it won’t boot. If you didn’t access your computer you feel like there’s no work done by you. If you don’t do the backup properly, you feel like you lost your files.

Follow our tips for solving Windows boot problems, you can recover your files. I’ll let you know how to boot into a live Linux installation and save your data. There is a restriction, these instructions will only work if you can’t get into Windows, though your computer will boot. You can’t use this procedure to recover your data if you have a dead drive, or can’t turn on your computer, or even can’t see anything on your screen.

Tools needed:

Your data remains in Hard Drive or solid state drive. You need to boot into an Operating System other than Windows to copy the data from Hard Drive. You can try Linux for this process because there are endless versions of it as they are free and installation is also simple. I’ll use Linux Mint as it is similar to Windows and popular. You need three things to create a bootable USB Drive. You need storage such as cloud storage space, an external drive or a sufficiently large flash drive to copy your data. A Spare flash drive of 4 GB or more is required to install Linux. You also need a working system for setting up the bootable USB flash drive with Linux.

The Universal USB Installer tool from Pendrivelinux makes this process easier. Download the copy of the tool by visiting their site, then link to Linux Mint download page for downloading the ISO of Mint.

The screen inside the Linux Mint is displayed below.

Similar to Windows, you need to select the versions between 32-bit and 64-bit of the operating system. From few year 64-bit OS is the better than 32-bit, I use 64-bit. If you aren’t sure, use 32-bit for compatibility. The Cinnamon flavor helps me to do this process perfectly. The mirrors in Linux Mint 18. 1 with Cinnamon 64-bit are visible like this.

If you have selected the correct version of Mint, select the download mirror in your country from the website. This download is nearly 1.7 GB at the time of writing which only takes few minutes if your internet connection is fast.

Whereas the Linux Mint 18.2 with Cinnamon consists languages and you can download those through the PDF links in the below image.

Installation of Linux on Flash Drive

We are ready with our tools to install Linux. Insert your Flash Drive into your secondary computer. Open a File Explorer window to PC. Double check to make sure the drive letter of the Flash Drive. Open Universal USB Installer after this from where you downloaded it. The tool questions you what version of Linux you are installing. Choose Linux Mint from the list and then tap Browse next to installation of Linux on Flash Drive. Next, find the place where you downloaded the Linux Mint ISO. In the next step, select the flash drive which you inserted by letter. Don’t check show all Drives, as this includes your internal hard drive in the list.

Check the box to Format Drive to wrap up. This wipes up it clean so mint installs successfully. You can add a persistence file in the next step. Through this you can save changes made to the OS in between boots. The Operating System acts as it’s the first time you have used it at the time you boot up without persistence. Permanently, you can’t install any software.

Triple-check your drive letter to confirm you don’t erase the wrong device after you are done with all. Enter Create to begin the process. Wait until the Installation is done, Process is Completed before tapping close. Now your flash drive is ready.

Boot from the Flash Drive on the Problem PC

You should confirm that your primary computer will boot from the flash drive. Once you turn on your PC, Press F12 to select boot device or Press ESC for boot options will be visible. This varies on every system, so you might have to try a few minutes to find it. The key is DEL, ESC, or F12. You need to hit the right key repeatedly as soon as possible you boot until you see the boot menu. By using the arrow keys, you can highlight your flash drive. It will likely be USB, Kingston 3.0 otherwise something similar with the drive’s manufacturer. Tap Enter to select that as your boot device and now you will head into Linux. OS running from the flash drive is slow, so be patient as it loads. Linux Mint welcome screen will be visible after a minute.

To set up the OS, you need to enter some basic info. Open your Linux desktop by entering Username and Password.

Back Up Your Data

To save it, you have to move your data onto a different medium. Launch a file browser known as Nemo on Mint. See for it’s folder icon

situated on the left hand side of the taskbar at the bottom of the screen. Next find your hard drive listed on the left sidebar under devices. This is the only drive listed, shown by size or name. Tap on one and see if it has the Users, Program Files, and Windows folder inside. That will be your internal drive if you find those.

To receive your files, point to Users > USERNAME. All your documents, videos, and pictures unless you have moved your user folder. You can’t backup installed programs. On concord, you can copy the AppData folder to save configurations for some software.

You need to move everything to other drive since your hard drive is dead. Probably, you won’t have enough room for everything unless your Linux flash drive is huge or you don’t have many files to recover. Thus, you should connect a flash drive or an external hard drive using the file browser with enough room to copy everything.

You can use your cloud storage if you don’t have an extra drive but only need to back up a few files. Sign into Google Drive, Dropbox, or any other provider using the default Firefox browser. For those accounts, you can drag-and-drop those files into your storage. It takes long time to upload everything, if you have dozens of gigabytes to back up. Now your Data is recovered.