Caput Hard-drive

crompton

My mates hard drive died the other day. Since he knows im a bit of a techie he wants me to investigate. Is there any way we can get his data back without paying(too much) for it??? :money:

DrSmutt

if you can get you hands on the same model of HDD you could take the controller off and fit it to the broken drive.

Does depend on what died.
Does the bios still see it.

crompton

okie dokie, ive found a site that offers a portable version of xp (runs from memory stick) would that be any use if i ran xp from my memory stick on his pc and then tried to get at the hard drive or see what was wrong?

DrSmutt

you just said his drive is dead not his windows.

Torby

remove the drive from his pc, put it in yours, run software like get back data or similar, I think you can download a trial, at least that lets you see if the drive contents are recoverable....the other way you mentioned may work....booting from a flash drive and then run the software....but you may have problems cos you're running it thru USB....mite be better to run it off a CD ...there are versions of that available as well

DrSmutt

does his computer still try and boot from the drive?

Torby

DrSmutt wrote:

you just said his drive is dead not his windows.

From what he said I assumed that the pc only has one drive....and the operating system is on that....dead drive = no windows, it sounds like he wants to try and retrieve any data that may be lost if the drive goes binwards....lol....at least if he retrieves the data, he can buy another drive and install windows on it and he will have saved the data.....I think

crompton

what program could i use to make an image of the hard drive? its not a mechanical fault by the way

crompton

Torby wrote:

From what he said I assumed that the pc only has one drive....and the operating system is on that....dead drive = no windows, it sounds like he wants to try and retrieve any data that may be lost if the drive goes binwards....lol....at least if he retrieves the data, he can buy another drive and install windows on it and he will have saved the data.....I think

exactly right

hobo28

You could use a program called BartPE (Google it) to boot up from a CD and copy the contents onto either a memory stick or portable hard drive.

The simplest thing to do tho is to take out the hard disk, pop it into your machine and copy all his data off.

Then suggest to your friend he invests in a portable hard drive for backup purposes.

DrSmutt

I agree with hobo28. unplug your cd/dvd drive and put it on that cable.

windows should pick it up and copy the files over to your machine.

remember you can only copy the install files and any data file you have made not the programs that have been installed.