You’ve loaded the Ubuntu Live CD to recover files from a failed system but where do you store the recovered files? We’ll show you how to store them on external hard drives, on the same PC, a Windows home network, and other places.

There are many ways to transfer files you can access from a Ubuntu Live CD to a location that a stable machine Windows can not access them.

We’ll go through several methods, from each section from the Ubuntu desktop.

Use a healthy hard disk

If your computer has more than one hard disk or your hard drive is healthy and you’re in Ubuntu for reasons of non-payment, then access your hard drive is easy as pie, even if the hard disk is formatted for Windows.

To access a disk drive, it must first be mounted. To mount a floppy drive healthy, you simply select it in the Places menu in the top left of the screen. You must identify your hard disk size.

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Deleting files or quickly formatting a drive isn’t enough for sensitive personal information. We’ll show you how to get rid of it for good using a Ubuntu Live CD.

When you delete a file in Windows, Ubuntu, or any other operating system, it doesn’t actually destroy the data stored on your hard drive, it just marks that data as “deleted.” If you overwrite it later, then that data is generally unrecoverable, but if the operating system don’t happen to overwrite it, then your data is still stored on your hard drive, recoverable by anyone who has the right software.

By securely delete files or entire hard drives, your data will be gone for good.

Note: Modern hard drives are extremely sophisticated, as are the experts who recover data for a living. There is no guarantee that the methods covered in this article will make your data completely unrecoverable; however, they will make your data unrecoverable to the majority of recovery methods, and all methods that are readily available to the general public.

Shred individual files

Most of the data stored on your hard drive is harmless, and doesn’t reveal anything about you. If there are just a few files that you know you don’t want someone else to see, then the easiest way to get rid of them is a built-in Linux utility called shred. Continue Reading ->

Getting a virus is bad. Getting a virus that causes your computer to crash when you reboot is even worse. We’ll show you how to clean viruses from your computer even if you can’t boot into Windows by using a virus scanner in a Ubuntu Live CD.

There are a number of virus scanners available for Ubuntu, but we’ve found that avast! is the best choice, with great detection rates and usability.

Unfortunately, avast! does not have a proper 64-bit version, and forcing the install does not work properly. If you want to use avast! to scan for viruses, then ensure that you have a 32-bit Ubuntu Live CD.

If you currently have a 64-bit Ubuntu Live CD on a bootable flash drive, it does not take long to wipe your flash drive and go through our guide again and select normal (32-bit) Ubuntu 9.10 instead of the x64 edition. For the purposes of fixing your Windows installation, the 64-bit Live CD will not provide any benefits.

Once Ubuntu 9.10 boots up, open up Firefox by clicking on its icon in the top panel.

Navigate to http://www.avast.com/linux-home-edition.

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There’s any number of great antivirus tools that help protect your PC from viruses, but what about when you encounter an already-infected PC? Your best bet is a boot CD, and the free AVG Rescue CD cleans viruses easily.

The AVG Rescue CD comes in two flavors: an ISO image that can be easily burned to an optical disc, or a compressed version that can be installed to a bootable flash drive. Once you’ve done so, you can simply boot from the drive of choice directly to the AVG menu, where you can scan for viruses, edit files, test your drive, or even edit the registry. Since the bootable CD is based on a version of Linux, you can also access a number of common Linux tools to make changes to your system and hopefully make it bootable again.

The AVG Rescue CD is a free download for anybody, cleans viruses from Windows or even Linux PCs, and is a great addition to your PC repair toolkit. If you need some help setting up the bootable USB flash version, check out the Guiding Tech tutorial for the full walk-through.

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