Need to wipe out then restore 'My Book' to factory

WD External Drives External Drives for PC
1

Hi,

My worst nightmare; external backup disk crashed then a day later my desktop would not boot win7 or safe mode.  RAID 0 data (10 years worth) inaccessible, must reinstall OS which will wipe data. Dell support (Alienware Aurora) says only way to save data is to send to expensive recovery experts. First I will try to recover RAID image using ReclaiMe to ‘My Book’ external… but this will wipe that disk.

I think what I need to do is:

  1. copy all the software and files from the ‘My Book’

  2. Then, nuke the ‘My Book’ with the RAID image and copy my data off

  3. Format the ‘My Book’

  4. Copy the programs and files back to it.

Questions:

* Does this sound right?

* Would I do a regular win7 format?

* Are there any special considerations?

* Are there any hidden partitions to worry about?

Thanks so much for any help on this!!

Rusty

2

You might try booting from a Linux live CD and see if you can access anything you need. Most any version of Linux will work. The Live CD doesn’t actually install anything.

Joe