What personal data is lost when you reinstall?

[Guest]

I have had a crash of my system that I cannot resolve. Essentiually the
compluter freezes on the windows splash screen. I cannot get into the system
with any safe mode and I cannot see my hard drive when I go into console mode
when booting from the CD.... I have decided that I will use the CD and
reinstall windows. My hard drive is a RAID drive of 4 drive in RAID 0 all
mapped and mounted to a C: drive. The windows DIR and personal files are all
on the same drive though my personal files and setting are in a seperate DIR
structure, not under MY Documents. I want to know if I can reinstall without
lossing all the data that is in my personal folders? If not any suggestions
on how to access my data for backup purposes would be appreciated.

 

[Guest]

To perform a complete clean reinstall of XP you will lose all personal files.
Try a Repair install with the CD first before a drastic XP reinstall.
How to Perform a Windows XP Repair Install
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

 

[Shenan Stanley]

I have had a crash of my system that I cannot resolve. Essentiually
the compluter freezes on the windows splash screen. I cannot get
into the system with any safe mode and I cannot see my hard drive
when I go into console mode when booting from the CD.... I have
decided that I will use the CD and reinstall windows. My hard drive
is a RAID drive of 4 drive in RAID 0 all mapped and mounted to a C:
drive. The windows DIR and personal files are all on the same drive
though my personal files and setting are in a seperate DIR structure,
not under MY Documents. I want to know if I can reinstall without
lossing all the data that is in my personal folders? If not any
suggestions on how to access my data for backup purposes would be
appreciated.

If you perform a clean install - everything is lost - all programs and
setting and files that you did not manually back up and that are on the same
partition as the one you decide to install on.

If you perform a repair install, usually nothing is lost. This is why most
people should do a repair install if they cannot currently backup their
files, documents, email, contacts, pictures, drawings, spreadsheets, etc and
then backup and consider if they need to perform a clean installation...

If you perform a repair install, your installation media (CD) needs to
really be the same service pack level as your currently installed system.
You will likely need to create a new CD from the old one with SP2
slipstreamed/integrated into it. Something like "AutoStreamer" would assist
you in making this new CD from the old one.

Create a SP2 Slipstreamed Windows XP CD with Autostreamer
http://www.autopatcher.com/autostreamer.html

Perform a Repair installation
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315341

You could access your data for backup by performing a parallel install or
using something like the UBCD for Windows:
http://www.ubcd4win.com/

Know that after a parallel install, you may have to "take ownership" of
files and folders in order to access them.

 

[DL]

And if your problem is caused by hardware you will lose all data anyway as
raid 0 has no fault tolerance

 

[Star Fleet Admiral Q]

I suggest when you rebuild to use RAID 10, since you have 4 drives. That's
RAID 0 + RAID 1, stripping and mirroring, you'll have the best of both
worlds.

--

Star Fleet Admiral Q @ your Service!

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