The XMEN Clan Forums

i'm sure that this ? has been assked before.

there is data on an old comp (windows ME, *Cringe*) we want to keep. unfortunately the drivers are effed up enough that we can't seem to fix them. as such we can't get into windows without safemode and cannot save the photos we want to keep onto CD's. So i want to make a new partition for the win2k OS we bought to put on the box. question is, would we be able to do this without touching the old data? i have very limited time left to work on this tonight and partition magic or similar program is not an option.

You can't do it with the partitioning software from MS - if you repartition you'll hose it.

However, you could use linux tools to do it. There's one called parted (partition editor) that is commonly used, but I don't know if it wipes them or not. I do know that there are several tools that explicitly move data if needed, without losing it, to make room for a new partition. You can download Knoppix (http://www.knoppix.com ) and try it; it's Linux that boots runs from CD and is often used for system recovery.

Another alternative is to install a windows OS (another ME or, say, 2k) on to the same drive, same partition, but different directory. Then it'll boot that OS and you can get at the data that is still on the partition.

that last one being the "upgrade" type of install right?

i read through the manual a little and it sounded good till i realized it wanted me to be in the OS with the CD drive functioning to do it. i'm still poking around with boot up stuff but it's not going very well... i'm beginning to think i may just have to take the box w/ me and mess around with it down where i live.

so it turns out i have a couple more days to work on the comp

but i'm still havein a heckofa time figureing out what i'm going to do. I attempted reloading windows ME over a different directory, in attempt to fix drivers etc. so i could burn backups, but it seems as though it won't let me do that without deleting the old partition first

No! It's not the "Upgrade" option at all. You're trying to create a second complete installation on the same partition.

It should ask you about which partition to put it on, creating a new one or should it put it on one of these existing partitions. So you tell it to put it on an existing partition and give it a different directory name than the one your original OS was in. But yes, you'll need a full version CD to boot and install from.