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hard drive data recovery?

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Hi All
I would be grateful to any one who could help with my problem
I now have an all new PC because my old PC crashed
It would not boot up and no lights came on.
My question is how can i recover data from my old PC's hard drive (as luck would have it i did not backup anything)

thank you in anticipation
«1

Comments

  • marksward
    marksward Posts: 258 Forumite
    there are data recovery companies and software, you will pay :(

    no help to you right now but you should look at online backups such as carbonite or elephantdrive.
  • Hi,

    I'm not much of an expert but my laptop died and we were able to remove the hard drive and put it in another laptop that was the same make etc and it powered up and we copied the data to an external hard drive and then onto my new laptop.

    I suppose it depends if the problem was with the hard drive or something else. All may not be lost. Good luck I'm sure someone more knowledgeable will reply soon!
    [
  • isofa
    isofa Posts: 6,091 Forumite
    If the hard drive is actually dead you are looking a quite a lot of money to rescue the data, it's a very skilled job requiring clean room facilities and specialist equipment.

    The top company offering is: http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.co.uk/ but they are expensive, but offer a free consultation.

    There are others such as: http://www.datatrack-labs.com but I don't know if they are any good!

    If of course your hard disc isn't dead, you can take it out of the old PC and installed it in a new PC as a secondary hard drive, then access the data from there!
  • Browntoa
    Browntoa Posts: 49,601 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper Photogenic
    Ex forum ambassador

    Long term forum member
  • bookduck
    bookduck Posts: 1,136 Forumite
    abot 8-ish years ago Ontrack quoted around £160 for their engineer to visit (with a piece of s/w) For this 2GB disk to be sent away cost around £995 or £985???. Can't remember if this was pre or post discount as our organization has a contract with them.

    They charge per drives capacity, and not the size of file recovered.
    GOOGLE it before you ask, you'll often save yourself a lot of time. ;)
  • amcluesent
    amcluesent Posts: 9,425 Forumite
    >It would not boot up and no lights came on.<

    If disk failure wasn't the fault on the old PC, just set it be be a 'slave' and connect it to the hard drive cable on you new PC.
  • Russ66
    Russ66 Posts: 549 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 500 Posts Combo Breaker
    I would imagine that your old PC suffered a mobo or psu failure judging by the "no lights".
    Take your old hard drive out and connect it to the ribbon cable & power lead that go into the back of the cd/dvd drive on the new pc.

    When you boot it up, go to drive D or whatever the cd was and you should be able to see your old data. It is then a case of drag & drop etc from your old HD to the HD on the new machine and copy it all from there or burn a disc etc.

    HTH
    You're Damned If You Do & You're Damned If You Don't :doh:
  • I found that I lost all my photographs and Work Documents from my laptop, I had to use a data recovery service, It cost me £249 + VAT, but I have learned my lesson!

    I used: www.xytron.co.uk they were helpful & quick.:money:
  • ABH_3
    ABH_3 Posts: 1,211 Forumite
    If you're still stuck for data recovery companies, there is always http://www.retrodata.co.uk if you mention you have seen him posting in uk.adverts.computer http://groups.google.com/groups/profile?enc_user=aw2fBRgAAACnsM-OMsnfOMW7UCBP_Qr3Ix4jQvcmgOueikQkn9_6BA then he may even give you a discount (at least he used to give people a discount I'm not sure if he still does but he's been around a number of years as Odie Ferous).

    HTH
    It could have been worse. At least source code's not combustible, or you can bet somebody at McAfee would have lit it.
  • Lawbag_2
    Lawbag_2 Posts: 361 Forumite
    Just because a PC wont boot up, doesnt mean the hard drive is dead.

    Id get an external Hard Drive caddy and see if it will connect via Firewire or USB
    "See you on the Other Side"
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