Windows XP to Win 7 easy transfer - what a crock of ****

smr

smr

smr

Soldato
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Hi all,

I do some part time computer repairs and a customer of mine I am in the process of upgrading from XP to Win 7.

He has a hefty sum of files to transfer so I thought it apt to utilise the easy transfer tool... I saved everything that needed saving onto a USB hard drive (as you may know it saves as .mig01 .mig02 etc.)

Well everything has gone across fine except the pictures (of which there are 46 gbs worth of)...

It gets half way then says "Windows Easy Transfer can't open the Easy Transfer file. Make sure your USB device is plugged in or check your network connection."

So I thought I'd take the all the mig files off the USB HDD and put them all in a folder on the desktop which may work.

It gets half way through and says "Can't read from the source file MIG10" ... ... I wish I had done a manual backup of the pictures now - is there a way around this?

Please PLEASE help :(
 
Ouch!

I am assuming you have already nuked the HDD/installed 7? If so I doubt you will get those pictures back using data recovery tools.
 
SiriusB said:
Ouch!

I am assuming you have already nuked the HDD/installed 7? If so I doubt you will get those pictures back using data recovery tools.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I point the finger at Microsoft for this but I'm pretty sure my customer will point the finger at me, half of his pictures have been lost.
 
In all fairness when it comes to something like pictures I would have made a standard backup so you can physically SEE the files and check they all work. Not sure why the Easy Transfer tool didnt work, never had much issue with it in the past. Though never tried to shift 45GB of data with it.

The guy will blame you and him having no backups wont make him less angry at you! :p
 
NEVER trust windows to copy all the files, it lies and cheats

NEVER format the drive unless the customer HAS CONFIRMED all the files are over

I always

1) boot from a boot cd and rename windows, program files, docs and settings to .old then install the new windows

2) vista/ w7 move the files its self

3) if the drive MUST be formatted I swap it for another drive and either sell them the new drive (10 - 30) or get them to confirm they have all their files before I erase the original drive and it goes back into my spares pile

download pandora recovery you can probably get most of their files back anyway
 
incase you dont read my post to the end

download pandora recovery you can probably get most of their files back anyway

you will only have lost the files that have been overwriten by the new OS...
 
edscdk said:
NEVER trust windows to copy all the files, it lies and cheats

NEVER format the drive unless the customer HAS CONFIRMED all the files are over

I always

1) boot from a boot cd and rename windows, program files, docs and settings to .old then install the new windows

2) vista/ w7 move the files its self

3) if the drive MUST be formatted I swap it for another drive and either sell them the new drive (10 - 30) or get them to confirm they have all their files before I erase the original drive and it goes back into my spares pile

download pandora recovery you can probably get most of their files back anyway
Click to expand...

I've learnt a lesson here.. let's say that.

Ok, to try and resolve this problem - I've seen some suggestions but the drive recovery thing I think will work best.

Now, I have only done this once before - a customer accidentally formatted her hard drive, I took it home and used Get Data Back NTFS and managed to see, and retreive her files.

However, the difference in this instance is that I have formatted the drive - and then installed Windows 7 already. If I use try Pandora on the drive to recover the pictures which were on it would that work ?

If so, should I take the drive out of the PC and plug it into my workbench PC as a slave and try Pandora on it that way?

Thanks guys.
 
smr said:
If so, should I take the drive out of the PC and plug it into my workbench PC as a slave and try Pandora on it that way?

Thanks guys.
Click to expand...

yes,

as stated you will (should) ONLY loose files physically overwritten by the new OS install..

the first few GB of the drive probably only had OS files and apps on anyway so possibly you will loose NOTHING..

HOWEVER

you WILL loose all the files names, and the folders, it will jsut give them random names (like restore00000001, restore0000002 etc etc)
 
have you googles you issue? if you have the transfer files im sure the data can be extracted... the must jsut be zipped file?
 
There are 31 mig files, about 20 of them have transferred from the usb drive to the hard drive.

I'm now trying to transfer mig10 on its own which is a 3 gb file... it gets down to 400mb left and says that it cannot read the source disk.

they won't open with winrar.

I think the mig files can only be used / extracted with the WET process.
 
Maybe it is your USB HDD that is being difficult...

Perhaps try transfering the files to a different machine, see if it goes across? Or if possible take the HDD and plug it in internally [assuming you can get at the HDD]
 
I think it's a problem with just the mig10 file as I've just transferred mig20 without any problems.

The problem is I think I need mig10 if I do the WET transfer and thats probably the reason why half way through transferring the pictures it says unable to read from usb disk...

If I copy all migs across except for mig10 to a folder on the desktop and try runnin WET then I'm pretty sure it will say the same thing - that it cannot read from the source file.
 
out of the 31 mig files about 20 of them are transferred to the local hard drive ok...

Is it worth transferring the other 10 migs (31gbs) to the local hard drive - skipping mig10 which obviously has a problem and trying the WET then?
 
edscdk - which scan type do you recommend - i've just seen for myself that on hte deep surface scan it seems to find images but they don't detail the folder they are from - I'd have no way of knowing which images are from which folder - or basically which images are from User/My Pictures ...

I guess I cannot whinge too much given the circumstances but if I have no way of knowing that the images it's finding aren't from "My Pictures" then I'm not going to be sure if it's retrieved the correct ones.
 
I've just ran Pandora and Get Data Back and can't find the images before I formatted the drive. ;\

Thanks for your help though - much appreciated. Not feeling particularly brilliant right now!
 
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