I shouldn't say client but I feel it gets the point across better.
He should be a client but because I know his situation I'm doing the work free. He said he doesn't "need" anything backed up but if I could it'd be cool. Obviously I want to at least give it a good attempt at getting data off.
Problem. The machine is so FUBAR'd it freezes almost as soon as it starts up and shows a million errors/infection warnings. I see Limewire on the desktop which = I'm not willing to plug the drive into a personal rig to rip data off because I don't know what kind of STD's this whore has.
The obvious choice would be to use a PI disk of any sort... Ubuntu's nice. Problem is, how do I back up data when I need the live disk to stay in the only cd drive?
I'm not plugging my externals into the computer because I don't want to compromise my own disks and I don't have thumb drives big enough to make transfers worth it.