Recovering

The first pc
Was harddrive-free.
You want a backup copy?
Just make another floppy!

But that's ancient history. Back to the present.

The trouble with laptops
Is their tendency to stop-
So you doubt that the harddrive
Is still alive.

I was up till 4am last night, working with M.'s laptop. I think I've gotten everything off it now. The harddrive is running way too slow, and declines to boot into any form of XP, even safe mode.

But I found I could boot it into Linux using a bootable CD. That let me read the harddrive and copy files out the USB port to solid-state backup.

XP said no way.
But Linux saved the day.