Dual boot question and deleted file recovery.

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Both separate issues.
Ok bad news for me is that while cloning a failing HDD during a well needed comp upgrade, a software error resulted in wiping both the donor drive and recipient drive which left the drive unreadable. Don't ask as I definitely followed all the instructions but it happened.
On top of this, it appears that a couple of years ago my other half had discarded the original Win 7 and CS2 installation disks among others during a commando style operation to clean out my study which I admit had become a bit of a tip due to me being taken seriously ill nearly 4 years ago.
I've lost quite a few more recent pics, files etc but the important image files from a few years ago are still on my old backup drive so really the worst part is losing my Windows 7 OS and CS2. I still fortunately have the Microsoft Office installation disk and it's now loaded successfully onto the new SSD.
I've used EasUS free software to determine that the deleted files on the old drive are actually still present and most like(?) recoverable but I'd need to upgrade to paid to be able to recover the files though it would be unlikely to recover the OS etc. This I will deal with later.

Fortunately my neighbour who has Windows 10, let me have his Win 7 disk which surprisingly was accepted as legitimate after installing it on my new SSD and registering it. It is only temporary as I'll be upgrading to Win 10 in the next week or two once I have everything upgraded and running.
I'm sure I can resolve the drivers for my ageing professional film scanner and printer so that should be ok but losing CS2 was more of a bigger issue.

I do still keep an old computer with Windows XP Pro on it to enable me to run a specific image editor specifically for my old but excellent Fuji S5 Pro portrait camera. The software won't run on anything more recent than XP but it's excellent and I feel it's worth sticking in a cheapo 120Gb SSD in the new build and as I still amazingly have my XP Pro installation disk, I could possibly run a dual boot system whenever I wish to run the old software. I also have a copy of CS2 on the old hard drive so I may be able to clone that off the old HDD too.

The question is: Does running a dual boot system sound feasible as a temporary measure? This mobo and cpu that I'm currently using will be going into my backup comp once I've decided on the CPU and Mobo I'll be putting in the new build.
Also if anyone can suggest any deleted file recovery software that actually works then I'd really appreciate it.
Cheers.
 
On your old HDD did you lose the partition? I used EaseUS partition recovery wizard to successfully restore a partition recently.
 
On your old HDD did you lose the partition? I used EaseUS partition recovery wizard to successfully restore a partition recently.

To be honest I've given up on recovery of any more data for the moment and have been working on setting up two new SSDs with software for a dual boot system. For £24 for an extra 120Gb SSD it was ideal for the occasional use of the software I mentioned and keeps my main 250Gb SSD free for the primary OS etc. With regard to your suggestion in post#2, to be honest I don't have enough experience with software to employ your suggestion of running the OS on a virtual machine at the moment but will definitely look at this once I've done research as it would be in my future interest to do so. I will also be installing Windows 10 so look out for more questions from me.:D

I've installed all the upgrades I can with the current mobo etc with the exception of adding a decent GPU which I will do as soon as I've chosen the right one.
Once I have everything fully up and running, I still have the hard drives to explore and will hopefully recover most of the lost files that might prove important.
Funnily enough I was going to try EaseUS to see if it would recover the partition. I tried using their free data recovery software but it only shows what is recoverable and will not actually recover the deleted files though I might well invest in a copy which will do so as it seems to be one of the best of it's kind and is worth having on hand in future.
 
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