Peppermint Live CD/DVD/USB - Create for Emergency Backup

Create Live Peppermint CD/DVD/USB to Backup Data when Windows 7 Will Not Boot​

   Information

In some instances, Windows 7 installations can become non-bootable if serious corruption of the system files have taken place, for example through the action of malware. If these corruptions are extremely severe, the installation cannot be repaired and the only course of action left is often to wipe (format) the hard disk and reinstall Windows 7 from scratch. Before you do that, however, you may wish to copy any user data (photo's, music etc.) files from the faulty installation to a backup drive.

This tutorial will show you how to do this in just a few easy steps by creating a free Live PepperMint5 Linux distribution on a bootable USB flash drive or CD.

   Note

There are many free Linux distributions that can accomplish this task, but I have specifically chosen PepperMint5 because:

• it is a small, lightweight distribution

• it has a look & feel that will be familiar to Windows-only users

• it does not require any knowledge of Linux jargon (e.g. sda1, sda2)

• it is easy for novice users to understand

*** Update ***
I've decided to replace the use of the Lili USB creator originally referenced in this tutorial, with the Rufus USB creator, after some reports of problems with Lili. Special thanks to jumanji who brought this to my attention, and also suggested Rufus as an alternative.

The screen capture images are taken from PepperMint3 -- the distro available at the time of writing this tutorial -- but they are the same for later versions such as PepperMint4 or PepperMint5.

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:note: Requirements:
In order to perform an emergency backup, you will need the following :

Hardware:-

• External USB drive (to store your backed-up data)

• 1Gb or larger USB thumb/flash drive (to hold your bootable PepperMint5 installation)

Software:-

• Rufus USB Creator (to create the PepperMint5 installation)

• 32-bit edition of PepperMint5

You will need to know how to boot the troublesome computer from either a CD/DVD or USB drive. The way you do this depends largely on the make of BIOS of your computer. If you aren't sure, just ask.

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Step A - Creating the Live Peppermint5 USB/CD/DVD

On a working computer download Rufus and the PepperMint5 ISO from the links above. Now run Rufus by double-clicking the Rufus executable.

Replicate the settings shown in the Rufus panel below. Use the CD icon to browse to the location of the PepperMint5 ISO, and confirm that correct ISO is selected as shown at the very bottom of the panel.


Click Start, and then OK on the warning pop-up to write the ISO and make the USB flash drive bootable. Once complete, a confirmation message is displayed, as shown below.

You can now close Rufus and unplug the USB flash drive. You have now created the Live PepperMint5 Linux USB.

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Step B - Booting from the Live Peppermint5 USB/CD/DVD

Insert the USB flash drive into a USB2 port (or insert the CD/DVD into the DVD drive) on the problem computer and boot with either device.

After a few seconds, the PepperMint5 boot screen will appear. Select Live Mode as shown below. and hit enter.

PepperMint3 will now boot to the screen shown below.

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Step C - Copying user data to the external USB drive

Click Menu and then click File Manager as shown below.

Click on the File Manger that opens, and then type CTRL+N to open a duplicate File Manger Window and arrange them side-by-side.

Use the left-hand file manager window to browse for and locate the files you want to copy. Select your external USB drive in the right-hand side file manager window. Now simple click & drag the files you want to copy from the left-hand window to the one on the right. In the example shown below, I am copying my Music folder to the external USB drive.

When you are done copying, close the file manger windows, and then select the Logout option from the Menu button. Now select Shutdown as shown below.

That's it - your data files are now safely copied to your external USB drive.

Regards,
Golden

Related Tutorials

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• How to Copy & Paste in Recovery Console on Windows 7 or Vista
• How to Create and Use a Linux Mint Mate USB Flash Drive to Recover your Files

 

[z3r010]

And you too Greg

 

[boohbah]

dont worry greg your on my xmas card list.

 

[Britton30]

You're on my list too Greg.

 

[gregrocker]

Yes but which list? :huh:

 

[Britton30]

Yes but which list? :huh:

[cough] My favorite MVPs list.

 

[clubsport]

I found this link from a search, as it appeared exactly what I needed to recover documents and pictures from my old unbootable hard drive.

I followed the instructions precisely, created a Peppermint 5, 32 bit image using Rufus on a new formatted USB stick.

Peppermint 5 opened up fine, I dragged and dropped the document - picture - download....etc.. icons to the adjacent window of my USB external hard drive.

I had no error codes and it all appeared to work fine....However!

In Peppermint the Home folder icons are empty, they do not have any files in them.

On the bad lap top with the external drive attached I am able to see the previously backed up files in an existing folder on the screen. So that appears to work well.

So it seems Peppermint does not view my files.

Is it likely to be a problem with my download?

Or, are my document files, somewhere else than where Peppermint 5 is trying to find them?

cheers.

 

[lehnerus2000]

@clubsport
Any chance of some screenshots?

Tutorial
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/9733-screenshots-files-upload-post-seven-forums.html

 

[clubsport]

Hi lehnerus2000

I have on going problems and posted screenshots here;

http://www.sevenforums.com/general-...-start-up-repair-purgatory-8.html#post2828355

Cheers.

 

[cd113804]

Hi! I have a similar situation to user clubsport, where I just found this link from a search and it looks exactly like what I need in order to recover my files, but when I try and boot my laptop through the USB with Peppermint on it, it doesn't move past the "Starting Up..." screen—the bar fills up slowly, but once it's full it just stays on the screen, and so far I've left it like this for over a half hour with no change. Is this normal? How long is it supposed to take to load?

Edit: Never mind, I shut it down and reloaded it and it worked just fine! I have no idea why it was frozen on that screen, but I'm just happy that I managed to get to my files! (Though I wasn't able to access the external hard drive that I had Peppermint on, so I had to find another external hard drive to transfer the files to, but other than that everything worked fine!)

 

[ICIT2LOL]

I may have mentioned before but I use Ubuntu it does just the same job and some.
But horses for courses eh?

 

[jdkunha]

thanks

This tutorial was a life saver for me .I am a not much of a computer techie but thanks to this wonderful tutorial I managed to pull out my data from the laptop.
Thank you everybody
JD

 

[RedLad]

Hi Golden,

This looks like a great tutorial. I cannot get my laptop to boot properly, it keeps looping on the start windows normally or do a startup repair screen. Windows isn't launching at all.

I'm just wondering is it completely safe to do? Just that I don't want to further damage my laptop.


Cheers

 

[Golden]

Perfectly safe...when you boot from the Peppermint 3 or 4 USB drive, Windows doesn't startup so nothing in the system is affected when you copy out your user files.

 

[RedLad]

Perfectly safe...when you boot from the Peppermint 3 or 4 USB drive, Windows doesn't startup so nothing in the system is affected when you copy out your user files.

OK, thanks Golden. I will give this a try. I will be delighted if it allows me to save my data somehow. I was on the phone to a data recovery place earlier and they told me it would cost around 700-800 euro to get the data back from my drive, that is crazy expensive, I was not expecting it to cost that much.

Cheers

 

[Cjdau93]

Hi! I followed your tutorial, but when I went to move my internal hard drive material over to my external hard drive, it wouldn't let me "mount volume" from my internal hard drive. I'd give a picture but I'm on my phone,
It first said "Error: An operation is already pending"
It then said "Error: Error mounting /dev/sda2 at /media/peppermint/TI106332W0C: Command-line ' mount-t "ntfs" -o "unhelper=udisks2,nodev,nosuid,uid=999,gid=999,dmask=0077,fmask=0177""/dev/sda2" "/media/peppermint/TI106332W0C"" exited with non-zero exit status 13: ntfs_attr_pread_i: ntfs_pread failure: Input/output error
Failed to read NTFS $Bitmap: Input/output error
NTFS is either inconsistent, or there is a hardware fault, or it's a SoftRAID/FakeRAID hardware. In the first case run chkdsk /f on Windows then reboot into Windows twice. The usage of the /f parameter is very important!" (Etc about SoftRAID/FakeRAID)"

My windows won't start, it loops on the startup repair, and I did not download or update anything. It randomly crashed, gave me the blue screen, then when I restarted it did this. So I was hoping this would at least let me get my files on my hard drive.
Please let me know if you know what I can do about this error message. I don't know how to run chkdsk from the start up commands, and even if I did, everything I've tried through that goes right back to the startup repair black screen with moving mouse cursor.

 

[Cjdau93]

I went to "Go" and chose "Devices" and I right clicked my internal hard drive, tried "open" and the cursor spazzed out. I'm trying the other options now but they seem to just be in that loading cursor state.

 

[aangie]

question: external hard drive instead of USB

can you use external hard drive instead of usb. i have a lot of to copy so it wold be easier to transfer to hard drive.

 

[gregrocker]

Sure. External is a USB drive.

 

[mico91]

can you help me, Golden?
I do everything as you wrote, but when in file manager i want to copy files from my computer to usb flash drive, it copies maybe just few files, then both windows close (both file manager) and it sends me back to the desktop. And only few files were copied. But it says there is still 8gb free memory on my flash drive.

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi and welcome to SevenForums,
How much ram does the machine have ?
The Linux live disk operates using ram
Plus the clip board also occupies ram so you might need to copy and paste smaller amounts of files at a time ?

I'm sure Golden will appear sooner or later and confirm or deny this