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I have windows xp pc. I tried to install on it vista, and it went into a boot - loop. So I installed linux Ubuntu alongside vista and create a partition for the linux. How do I transfer files from the vista partition to the linux partition? as I said, I can start my xp-vista os because of the boot-loop..

thanks!

Tzahi Leh
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2 Answers2

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Ubuntu can read NTFS partitions by default. So you have nothing more to do than

  • boot Ubuntu
  • open the Files manager (Nautilus)
  • identify your Windows partitions in the left sidebar and click on it
  • Nautilus will automatically mount and open the drive. You can see a small eject symbol next to it which will unmount it again, when clicked.
  • Browse you Windows partition and get whatever files you want. Just copy them over to where you want them.
Byte Commander
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Recovering files from a Windows installation is a piece of cake in any Linux distribution, but you might have varying degrees of success depending on what exactly went wrong with your installation of Windows Vista. If your hard-drive has bad sectors, it might be a little trickier, but because the system does boot, I'm thinking that there isn't any concerning corruption.

The following assumes that all your files are actually intact and not lost in a corrupted hard-drive:

  1. Boot into Ubuntu and log in to your account.
  2. Open up Nautilus (your file manager), and create a new folder where you will be copying/moving your Windows files to. For the purpose of this tutorial, the folder will be called 'BACKUP'.
  3. Open Nautilus in another window and look in the side panel for additional devices and drives. Determine which drive has your Windows installation on it.
  4. Open the drive and navigate through the file system, clicking and dragging the desired files and folders to your BACKUP folder.
  5. Wait until the processes complete, and you'll have a copy of your desired files under your Ubuntu installation.

Note that you probably don't want to copy programs, .exe or .msi files, to your Ubuntu installation, since Linux can't natively run them.

If you can't access your Windows partition in Ubuntu, then there is probably something wrong with the file system or partition. If that's the case, it'll be more challenging to recover those files. See https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DataRecovery to get started with recovering files from a corrupt or damaged device.

Keefer Rourke
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