Access entire C drive from X source boot?

windows-7 windows-10 command-line boot cmd.exe

165,773

Booting to WinRE will give you the tools to access your entire C:\ but you need to determine what drive letter WinRE has given to your C:\ for the session you have booted to. To achieve this you use DISKPART.

Boot to your WinRE ("repair mode" as you call it)
Type DISKPART and press Enter
Type LIST VOL and press Enter
You will need to identify which is your system drive letter - this is often easily identifiable as they are often titled SYSTEM or WINDOWS or WIN8 etc. and often have the volume capacity (another easy bit of information to identify your C:\).
Make a note of the drive letter assigned by the WinRE environment - it may not be C:
Type EXIT and press Enter - The command prompt will return to the X:\Sources> prompt
Type your noted C: (exclude any trailing \) and press Enter - it should change the working directory to the drive letter. To verify it is your C: type dir and press Enter and you should see your Users folder which you can enter into (cd Users) and dir again to see your user account.

165,773

ManWithNoName

Updated on September 18, 2022

Comments

ManWithNoName almost 2 years

I would like to be able to access the entire C drive as my title says from booting in x source cmd whilst in repair mode, is this possible?
- Ramhound almost 8 years
  
  What have you tried exactly? It should be as simple as chaning the working directory to the drive letter assigned to the system partition, it might not be C, you should give us more information to work with.
- Shayan over 4 years
  
  Have you tried typing C: in the cmd on recovery?
ManWithNoName almost 8 years

Thanks for the response, so I have made it into diskpart, listed 3 volumes c, e and f. I exit going back to x source run cd: \e but the next line returns x source again.
Ramhound almost 8 years

Your syntax is incorrect. Chris indicates the correct syntax to use.
Kinnectus almost 8 years

You need to type: e: then press Enter
ManWithNoName almost 8 years

Yeah sorry that was a typo. I have ended up using pushd command to get to the drive unfortunately ordinary cd didn't want to work
Kinnectus almost 8 years

That's because you don't use cd to change drive letters :)
var firstName almost 8 years

You only need to type E: (no cd, or anything, just E:)
var firstName almost 8 years

Mark this as an answer if it solved your problem, @ManWithNoName.
escalator about 4 years

Good answer, could you stress that one needs to type just C: without the backslash `\` @Kinnectus? I suppose many readers might overlook this (me included).
Kinnectus about 4 years

Updated step 7, which I believe is where the confusion is.