If you have two computers, it's a cinch. I had to do this for a friend just today. He got a nasty boot-sector virus. I took his hard drive out, put it in a firewire/USB external drive enclosure, and copied his crucial files onto my computer(after an AV scan of his drive) and then burned him a DVD copy. I would just put his hard drive on my hard drive cable(after setting the HD jumper position to slave)to copy files, but I didn't have room in my dinky 'lil Dell(It was a gift OK?) Then I did a low-level re-format and a re-install of his OS, programs files, and his backup files. Works great now, and it got rid of his file fragments too. I know there are prob easier ways to do this, but I had the hard-drive case and it seemed like a good use.