Any way to recover my data?

ennogs · 19 Dec 2009 at 15:27

My main PC has bit the dust. I had most of my important stuff backed onto a seperate drive (D drive) and an external USB drive. However I also had stuff I need on the windows drive.

I have took the windows drive out of the broken PC and put it in my external USB drive. However it only gets recognised as a storage device. When I look at the drive it only shows 3 folders Documents and Settings, Program files and Windows

The stuff I need to recover was in a folder in the desktop. I also need to recover my favourites from IE and firefox.

I have tried taking out the windows drive from the working PC and replacing it with the windows drive from the broken PC. The drive is recognised but the PC restarts after trying to get into windows. It also does the same if I try to boot into safe mode. Both windows drives are 250Gb hitachi with XP SP3.

Is there anyway I can recover the data I need?

EsaT · 19 Dec 2009 at 15:43

1. You can't boot different PC with drive of different PC.
2. If you do that with damaged drive there are good changes that you're just destroying data permanently.

Drive to be recovered must be connected as second drive to working PC and software installed to that PC is then used for searching broken drive.

http://www.pcinspector.de/Sites/file_recovery/info.htm?language=1

ChileanLlama · 19 Dec 2009 at 15:52

You're fine adding it through USB as a "storage device". As long as you can see the contents, which you can, you should be able to recover the data.

You don't want to try booting from it, and unless the new PC was exactly the same components as the old one, it's almost certainly going to crash as it won't have the correct drivers installed to allow Windows to boot.

All your data, desktop, favourites etc will be in the "Documents and Settings" folder. You should find a folder in there with your username. Inside that folder should be the stuff you're looking for, and you can copy it to the new PC. You might want to change your folder options to "show hidden files and folders" so you can see everything on the drive and make sure you've recovered everything you need.

Also you might find that you need to change the Permissions, and take ownership of the folders (you can do this by right clicing a folder and going to the appropriate tab), as if they were encrypted in Windows even if you have the same username it may say you're not able to open them as they were created on another machine with a different profile.

ION · 19 Dec 2009 at 15:56

Yes there is one option is to take it to a proper data recovery company (not a stupid company with some recovery software). However this is very expensive (talking about 300 to 400 quid).

Your other option is to buy urself some recovery software.

Finially a word of warning always if you can have you data on a different harddrive from ur windows harddrive. Otherwise this will keep happening that goes's for desktop aswell simply remenber to you shortcuts to a seperate harddrive.

Also it's best to every so often image ur drives so this doesnt happen again

coupe69 · 19 Dec 2009 at 16:02

Download the latest BartPE files which can be found here.

Create the boot disk, once this is done boot your computer via the cd you have just created making sure you have the hard drive that has the data you need attached, and also another hard drive or usb pen to copy your important data onto.

Once you have booted into bartPE navigate to A43 file manager, here you should be able to copy the files you need onto the usb pen or spare drive, Job done

Dutchman · 19 Dec 2009 at 16:24

ChileanLlama said:
All your data, desktop, favourites etc will be in the "Documents and Settings" folder. You should find a folder in there with your username. Inside that folder should be the stuff you're looking for, and you can copy it to the new PC. You might want to change your folder options to "show hidden files and folders" so you can see everything on the drive and make sure you've recovered everything you need.

As above, your desktop will be under the name of your windows account in Documents and Settings

DavyBoy · 19 Dec 2009 at 16:32

ION said:
Yes there is one option is to take it to a proper data recovery company (not a stupid company with some recovery software). However this is very expensive (talking about 300 to 400 quid).

You'd have to be crazy to pay that kinda cash to get someone to recover files off a hdd.

My dad managed to pull a bunch of files off one of his old HDD's that he formatted without backing up his pictures and documents with an app called "recover my files".

It certainly worked, he got all of the files he wanted back without any issues at all.