[NTLUG:Discuss] Linux to the rescue - again

[Greg Edwards]

Need to get a second opinion if this plan would work.

History:

I have a windows box that the CPU finally died in.  I've re-built the 
box and installed the HD from the old box.  It's a Windows XP install 
so, of course bringing it up was a miserable failure.  OBTW, the same 
problem happened a few months ago with my Linux box and I was able to 
rebuild without any headaches.

Unfortunately my backup is a couple months old so I need to recover the 
data files from this box.  I have been able to get winders to run (limp 
along) enough to confirm that the file system is still in tact.  But, I 
am not about to risk using windows to get the data off the box.

One plan is to attach a USB drive to the box and do an install of 
Mandriva on the USB drive.  Mount the windows HD and copy all of my 
files to the USB drive.  Rebuild the winders box, and restore the files.

Another plan would be to boot into rescue mode from the Linux install 
disk, mount both the USB drive and the winders drive and copy.

Anyone gone down this road before?  Have any gotcha warnings for either 
plan?

TIA,
-- 
Greg E