Data Recovery - is this easy?

Shicky

Shicky

Shicky

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Belfast,Northern Ireland
Have been asked by a friend to try and rescue some files from his laptop which has BSOD, unfortunately to add insult to injury it is rebooting as soon as it gets to the BSOD so he's not sure what it says exactly (error code wise)

So he has asked me to try and recover the files somehow, unfortunately I have no experience in the matter and I am currently trawling hundreds of pages online to try and understand it better. Can anyone point me in the right direction or give me a few tips?
 
Your best bet is to try and fix why it is crashing. System restore through advanced startup options and see if that works. Try safe mode etc, chances are it's malware related a dodgy update that hasn't worked properly or another system change that's messed up.

Failing that, take his HDD out, put it in an external caddy, connect to your system via USB or whatever and you're good to go. That's providing the HDD isn't broke.

You might have to take ownership of some of the files to copy them.

Just drag and drop what you need to another external HDD or DVD etc.
 
If its the case that the HDD is broken, is there any way to salvage some of the data?

Will need to go hunting for my icebox!
 
Can you not boot it into safe mode ?

Tried a linux live CD like knoppix, its really not that scary, boot it up, when you get the the desktop you should see the HDD. Throw in a USB thumb drive, copy over the files, Job done.
 
MilanoChris said:
Your best bet is to try and fix why it is crashing. System restore through advanced startup options and see if that works. Try safe mode etc, chances are it's malware related a dodgy update that hasn't worked properly or another system change that's messed up.
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I'm not sure I'd agree with this - the first priority is to secure the data, you can worry about fixing the computer afterwards.

Probably the easiest way is to boot from a Linux live CD and copy the files to an external drive - Linux will ignore NTFS file permissions, so no problem there, and it also has the advantage of avoiding any further writes to the HDD just in case there is some file corruption taking place when the OS boots.

Physically removing the laptop's HDD isn't a bad idea either though, assuming you have the necessary means to connect it to a working PC.

Shicky said:
If its the case that the HDD is broken, is there any way to salvage some of the data?
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If the HDD is physically broken, you'll need to weigh the value of the data against the cost of professional recovery, which won't be cheap. No doubt you'll get the usual advice to put it in the freezer, but don't count on it doing anything useful...
 
Im a bit confused on the linux live CD thing. Im assuming this isnt attaching the HDD to a linux machine. It just booting my machine with a linux live CD in it? Not sure exactly what I am looking to download as linux live didnt seem to be very popular on pirate - or is this what im looking for http://www.linux-live.org/ ? Or this is just any Linux dist on a cd?

Thank you bled, I will look into those
 
Shicky said:
Im a bit confused on the linux live CD thing. Im assuming this isnt attaching the HDD to a linux machine. It just booting my machine with a linux live CD in it? Not sure exactly what I am looking to download as linux live didnt seem to be very popular on pirate - or is this what im looking for http://www.linux-live.org/ ? Or this is just any Linux dist on a cd?

Thank you bled, I will look into those
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As i said before, get knoppix (you dont need to look on piratebay for it, its free). Put it into the machine thats not booting properly, set bios to boot from CD first, job done.
 
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