Urgent! Windows Reinstall and Dual BIOS

[tambeshakunt]

So,

In another system with a Gigabyte 970A- DS3P board and the AMD FX-8320, the main BIOS keeps getting corrupted every 1 or 2 months and once it recovers from the backup, the Windows installation goes for a toss. Then every time, I use the 'load drivers' trick to copy out files and reinstall Windows. 🙁
The Hard drive is completely fine and there are no problems there. I am thinking of changing the board to the ASUS M5a97.

So it happened again yesterday - my question is: To save time, can I plug the internal hard drive which has the corrupted Windows 7 + data to a working PC and copy out the data to the working pc? As long as I boot to the working pc's drive, will the corrupted Windows files on the connected drive affect my working pc?


Thanks and the reason its urgent is because I want the system back running asap. I thought this was all possible but just wanted to confirm with others.

 

[iratemonkey]

No it won't affect. It is safe to do.

 

[iratemonkey]

You can even boot to live CD like a linux distro and copy out the files since they mount as NTFS. You can even do this on the SAME pc.

 

[tambeshakunt]

Yeah I know, but I want to avoid messing around with it further in case I accidently format some partition or something.

 

[iratemonkey]

Then clone the drive, use a write block.

 

[tambeshakunt]

Can't I just connect and copy? I think that will be the easiest to do.

 

[USAFRet]

Ideally, what you would do is to connect that drive to a properly running PC.
Copy what you need off it, then wipe that drive and start over.

Just be sure of your boot order.

Either via an internal SATA cable, or an external SATA cable or dock. I have a USB cable (IDE/SATA) and it has saved much data off old drives.

The only important thing in there is your data. OS and applications can be resinstalled.

 

[tambeshakunt]

Yep, thats exactly what I was asking and exactly what I did- worked perfect . Just wanted to confirm.

thanks so much for your help !