Damaged laptop hard drive - what to do?

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psychic_teabag wrote: »

As far as the laptop you are using is concerned, the attached disk is just a data disk. So any users and passwords associated with the windows installation on the old drive are irrelevant. Only user ids enabled on the running system matter. It won't recognise the old username/password you used to use. I'm not sure how ntfs represents file ownership, but it's presumably by a user id. Creating an account with the same name/password won't necessarily use the same id, and therefore give you access to the files. (If they use ACLs, you might be able to give the account the same ACL, but that's boyond my knowledge.)

Taking ownership, as above, is one option, but I would avoid writing to the dodgy disk unless absolutely necessary.

Another option would be to use linux. My recollection is that, under windows, even the admin is not allowed to bypass file permissions, other than by taking ownership first. But as root on linux there would be no such restrictions - you should be able to read anything you want.

Something like Linux mint will work, and will bypass all ntfs permissions including acl and ownership, you just drag the files to a different physical hard disk. Linux does not work on bitlocker drives.

If the heads are shattered or bent in the drop, than any head movement could damage the surface - even if only reading, and so could any high speed spinning head chunks, so if you plan to pay for recovery minimise the powered on time.

BoiledBreadTomatoSauce

Thanks for all the replies, so here is a potential plan. Can anyone give any insight onto whether or not it will work?

- Replace the old HDD with a new one (likely SSD).

- Use a bootable USB to install a Linux OS onto the laptop (always fancied trying Linux anyway)

- Use this OS to get the data off of old HDD.

DoaM

You don't need to install Linux on the laptop - just use a DVD or USB drive that's bootable and run it as a Live CD.