How can I get my old files back ?

[Kwak]

Hi everybody,

I'm trying to find a way to get back old files that I let on another partition.

Explanation : I installed Mandrake 10.1 a year ago (already old at this time), and, being a newbie, hem, really new at Linux things, I made the worst error you can imagine : I installed packages too recent for my distro, which then crashed, and couldn't manage to boot again. I had to come back to Wind**s. The latter sucks more than before, so I'd like to use Linux again, but..

• Installing another Linux again without formatting doesn't seem to work. I should format the whole Linux partitions
• But I'd like to get the old Linux partition personal documents, put it on a USB key or best, transfer them on the XP partition.
• Is that possible, and how ? Or should I give more details about my PC ?

I find this website particulary useful and active. I hope some people will give me help - not like on other desert forums (I'm not english and it's sometimes difficult to find answers when asking the french linux communauty )

I Hope I didn't make to many mistakes. Thanks y'all.

[coopstah13]

it would be best to format the root partition that you will be reinstalling linux to

retrieving those files should not be a problem, the easiest way would be to boot up with a livecd (ubuntu, knoppix, etc) and then you should be able to mount your partitions and copy the data you want to keep from one to the other

[devils casper]

Install fs-driver in Windows OS. It will mount ext3 partitions and enable read/write access. You can files from Linux Partitions to Windows easily.

[noviceLinux]

The livecd method should work.I had used this approach for recovering files on my crashed fc8 pc .