Removing Desktop Hard Drive to View Files

0james0

My desktop has finally broken down, it's running Vista and can't boot past the blue screen. Doing some self diagnostics it seems the boot volume is damaged/ missing/ corrupt.

Had something similar on my laptop, that was damaged hard drive, so I replaced it, bought a dock type thing, put the old hard drive in and it connected into the USB dock of the laptop running the new hard drive and reinstalled windows and just copy pasted the stuff I wanted to keep.

It was easy.

Can I do something similar with the desk top hard drive? I had a quick check and it won't fit into the USB dock thing I have.

Would be nice to save the hard drive, but at the very least if like to get the good stuff off. Backed up a couple months ago, but only the music, films etc

donny-gal

You will need a similar casing for a 3.5" hard drive, rather than the 2.5" hard drive in a laptop.

To my mind if the hdd is damaged a blue screen will not be the result, it should start up into Dos, but will then show a message saying HD failure. This is supported by your old laptop hdd reading via the usb drive. It was probably the windows installation which was duff, and the re-installation on the new drive would have sorted it. So the logic to me says it should work for this, however, I am sure there will be more technical bods along soon, who may be able to help you fix it without buying a new hard drive. DG

TakeThis

You will need to enter Startup Repair from the Vista Windows Recovery Environment. You'll need a disc in that instance.

Follow these instructions in order to create one:

Download and save this Vista Recovery Disc Image to a working computer.
Next, download and install ImgBurn(No need to install the Google Toolbar. Remove the relevant tick). Burn the Image to Disc. Use this guide(skip step 2b)

Ideally, you'll need a Vista SP2 disc, but have a go with this one first.

esuhl

donny-gal wrote: »

To my mind if the hdd is damaged a blue screen will not be the result, it should start up into Dos, but will then show a message saying HD failure.

DOS hasn't been included since Windows 98, but the OP might be be able to us a bootable CD (like Slax) so access the hard drive. If you can configure the network settings, you should be able to access the files from another machine on your network, and can back up the files to that.

Actually, the error just sounds like the master boot record (MBR) has become corrupt. You might be able to fix this by booting into the Recovery Environment and using bootrec.exe in conjuction with either /FixMbr and/or /FixBoot.

0james0

Thanks guys.

Have tried different boot options, tried an auto repair which it said it could not do. It said no os found, so not sure where windows has disappeared to.

Tried to boot from disk, but could not get to boot screen to do it! Even holding the key still doesn't get me past the first screen now.

Will try the larger dock and see if I can format it and start again. Have Windows 7 now to put on which isn't a bad thing as Vista is gash!

esuhl

Oh sorry - I meant to include the link to the MS support page on bootrec.exe (to restore your boot sector): http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927392

But yeah - if you have the chance to install Windows 7 instead and can back up your data before reformatting, I'd do that.