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Recover data from a non-booting machine remotely via Ubuntu Live CD & TeamViewer

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27 Apr 2012CPOL 13.7K  
This will allow you to remote into a machine with a non-functioning OS remotely to recover data to an external USB drive or over the network.

Introduction

This will allow you to remote into a machine with a non-functioningOS remotely to recover data to an external USB drive or over the network.

Background

During a server migration from ancient Windows 2000 servers that were dropping like flies to new Windows 2008 R2 servers, their main file server crashed and wouldn't boot to the OS. Since their office was 75+ miles away and they needed their files asap, I had to figure something out. On the fly I tried this and was able to recover data from their RAID 1 volumes to the new file server over the network.Voodoo!

Steps

  1. Have the client download theUbuntu installation ISOand burn it to CD-R.
  2. Insert the CD into the dead machine boot to it.
  3. Choose, "Try Ubuntu" when the menu appears.
  4. Once you're booted to the desktop, have them open Firefox browser and go to Teamviewer.com.
  5. Have them click the circular blue "Tux" icon on the right side of the page.
  6. When the Linux download page appears, They should select the 4th download in the list (Debian, Ubuntu 32-bit) and choose to open with Ubuntu Software Manager.
  7. Once the download completes, a new window appears with a "Install" button, which they should click.
  8. Once it's completed installing, have them click, "Close."
  9. Have the customer click the far upper-left dock icon "Dashboard" and search for "Teamviewer". Click the Teamviwer icon to open it.
  10. After accepting the licensing agreement, have the client give you the number listed in "Your ID." and password.

Points of Interest

You'll then have access to the remote machine's disks. You may have access to a RAID partition if there are drivers for the RAID card in Ubuntu. Software RAID 1 drives should appear in the file browser as 2separateidentical drives.Make sure to check permissions for the migrated files since of course Linux doesn't recognize NTFS/AD permissions.

License

This article, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)


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