Marko Vojinovic wrote:
Ok, to summarize, using a small CentOS system in a virtual machine is one option (the "safe" one, I would say), while mounting / from Windows using that driver is another one (the "easy" one, because It doesn't feel so safe).
Note that the CentOS that you boot in the VM can be the same one you boot physically (which may, in some cases eliminate the need to reboot...). If you give it access to the whole disk, you'll be booting from the same grub setup so you have to manually select the centos boot from the grub menu, but in this scenario you still have control through your remote access to the running host.
For something a little stranger, you could set up a VM image with access to the raw disk, but set to boot from an iso image of your favorite Linux rescue or live cd or dvd.