dead pc?

thamesmatt

ok, thank you all for your suggestions...

as I see it I have a couple of options left (from various bits of advice I have recived from elsewhere)

1. A full reinstall of Windows XP - not formatting the drive

2. Buy an external HD caddy and plug it into my laptop and try and copy across the data.

I havent got access to a CD writer in the short term so I will save that advice for my final chance!

Are any of the above more likely to lead to the disaster that is lost data?

Matt

thamesmatt

ok, anyone else got any advice for me? am struggling now!

took hard drive out went to maplins bought a hard disk caddy thing and plugged it in to my laptop hoping to be able to pick it up as a usb drive, it found it but said dive was corrupted.

I was able to format the empty partition thinking I could install xp on it.... no luck seems to default to c drive when the boot disks are in.

so my last 2 efforts of reintalling XP or picking up as a usb and copying files have failed.

have also downloaded trintiy rescue thing mentioned about to the new d drive but cant access it!

I am now well and truely stuck!

albertross_2

have you tried chkdsk on it whilst in the caddy?

thamesmatt

yes, its not having it at all!!!

it recognises the disk ok but claims its corrupted. basically happy to bin it if i can get my photos off! growing more pesimistic after opening up pc and putting it in the caddy.

I thought that was the thing that wouold save it!

albertross_2

http://www.runtime.org/products.htm
http://www.finaldata.com/sub_products/products_1.asp
http://www.restorer2000.com/
http://www.recovermyfiles.com/

thamesmatt

cool thaks, gone for the 4th one as it appears to be free.

how do I get that from here, my old laptop (no cdr) to the knackered PC. memeory sticks dont seem to work!

albertross_2

cant you run them while it is in the usb caddy.

Some of the others have demos (I think), so you could try those to see if it can see the files at all.

thamesmatt

no, the disk is in the caddy in the usb port. when it accesses the caddy in anyway it always defaults to what is/was the c drive. I added a 2nd partition on the laptop but cant seem to get the pc to boot to it because I put the trinity rescue thing mentioned elsewhere on there.

If I could only change something to make it ignore the c drive bit.

I tried installing windows on the d drive new partition but when it started it claimed my c drive needed formatting! which I dont want to do under an circumkstances

byb3

depending on how desperate you are to recover your old data, there are plenty of data recovery/hard disk recovery companies out there who will recover all of data that can be read although it would be for a fair fee......i doubt your hard drive could go from being fine one day to being 100% unreadable the next.

unfortunately the lack of a cd writer does put you in a bit of a pickle. my suggestion would be to download SLAX and burn that onto cd. in laymans terms it is an operating system similar to windows that you can boot off a CD which then allows you to access your hard drive etc...

just to re-iterate i highly doubt you have lost all of your data.

good luck

albertross_2

I confess, I'm a bit lost, as to what is plugged in where, and what you have done

Do you have a laptop with internet connectivity that boots into windows? Is the caddy plugged into that? If so, download the utilities, and run it on the caddy drive.