trying to revive old laptop

[moomoo]

I have a old laptop with debian on it. Some time ago I managed to mess up the boot. I dont remember how. I would like to put mx on it but first I got to rescue some 90 gb of photos on it. I have tried to use the mx boot repair, on it, but it does not work. So now I was thinking about shrinking the partition to 100 gb, and then just install mx on the remaining,and then copy the photos over for a start. Would that be safe to do? Or are there other ways I should consider?

thanks

[Huckleberry Finn]

Can you post QSI on live session?

Also if Boot Repair displayed error: I do this and it always worked: "dd zero" the mbr first ( bs=446 count=1 )

Then start MX Boot Repair.. If it's a non-uefi (or legacy selected at bios) pc , select MBR, for Uefi select ESP ...

As there will be nothing in the mbr, it will do just what you say. (Because sometimes it says "there's already grub there" etc..)

Yes you can shrink with Gparted on live session but sometimes it's risky.

So, I would copy some part (at least the important ones or as much as possible) to a usb stick or so.. (if they weren't photos but something else, you would archive and put on a usb with a small size, but pictures won't be compressed much..)

[Friedrich]

I have a old laptop with debian on it. Some time ago I managed to mess up the boot. I dont remember how. I would like to put mx on it but first I got to rescue some 90 gb of photos on it. I have tried to use the mx boot repair, on it, but it does not work. So now I was thinking about shrinking the partition to 100 gb, and then just install mx on the remaining,and then copy the photos over for a start. Would that be safe to do? Or are there other ways I should consider?
thanks

a. From any linux live-usb (or CD) you should be able to copy your photos to a second usb-stick or external HDD.
b.1. Start a MX-Linux live-usb with persistence enabled on the stick itself and save (copy) the photos to the live-usb.
b.2. Shutdown
b.3 Insert the stick into another linux machine or reboot the live-usb-stick itself to check that your photos are saved.
b.4. Proceed .. :-)

[JayM]

...as long as the Live USB is a 128GB USB stick as OP says he has some 90GB of photos to back up. If so he should copy the files to Live-usb-storage/demo for them to be accessible when the USB stick is mounted after he's installed MX. If this is done booting MX with persistence enabled isn't even required.