Need some hard disk retrieval info.

[persi & alley]

This April 15 during the middle of preparing income taxes, my desktop computer died. Totally. I was in the middle of packing to move from that house to the house I am in now. I reached in and disconnected the hard drive and trashed the rest of the desktop. I redid the taxes on the laptop that I am now using. But that hard drive has thousands of photos that I unfortunately never backed up. But I still have the hard drive. If the hard drive totally crashed I guess I am out of luck but there must be a way that I can hook that hard drive up as an external disk drive and access those photos. Any suggestions?

The laptop I am using right now also has thousands of photos on it which are not backed up. Yesterday I bought a pack of DVD+RW which I plan to use to back up this computer before something bad happens again. I guess the DVDs may just be an intermediate step in eventually getting all of my prized pictures on one device. Again, any suggestions?

This is really stupid not having things backed up.

 

[theimp98]

sorry, not getting what you are mean.,
TO me pc crashed is different from the HD drive crashed, to HD failed.

if the hd is working, just get a external encloser and plug it into you laptop. the if the OS on the disk is bad, just do the same as above,
you may want to get some data recovery software or take it to someone that knows how to do it.

if its making clicking sounds, then you would need to take it to data recovery place.

 

[strange_wings]

Here's is how I've had to do it due to the fact that I had an IDE channel fail and corrupt several sectors. - If this is a possibility you want a very low level disk I/O and to copy one hard drive's image completely to another. Safest and simplest way to do this is on a desktop with a linux disc (whichever flavor you choose) without a desktop (GUI) loaded (when given the option at boot, you choose text mode). What this does is lowers your risk of damaging the hard drive further. Either it will work, or you'll get errors in the copy and it will stop due to too many bad sectors.

Then you'd put the copied to hard drive in and use a recovery tool.

Hard drives don't necessarily have to be making awful noises to mean they're dying or being ruined. If the crash was motherboard related you likely only knew something was horribly wrong with the computer stopped working or you had an error saying your OS couldn't boot. If it was another part of the PC that died, then your HD may be completely fine - in that case you'd just stick it in a $20 enclosure or another desktop.


I suppose the best question here is, did you ever see an I/O error before the crash?

 

[theimp98]

lol the best question first is, What did the PC die from

 

[fastnoc]

Spend 15 dollars and buy an external drive enclosure. Put the disc inside, plug it into the USB port and it will popup as a drive on the machine. Theimp98 had the same idea I have.

That's considering the hard drive didn't actually crash. If you hear a bunch of clicks when you turn the machine on (coming from the hard drive) it's the sound of the pinch heads trying to read the drive and failing. THis will most likely also mean you cannot retrieve your data.

There is an option if that happens. But it's expensive. There are companies that will take the drive, remove the platters (that's the discs the data is on) and put them in a special machine, retrieving the data. But again, it's expensive, and it won't simply give you back the data the way you had it before.

 

[icklemiss21]

And for future use, back up your data regularly.

http://www.idrive.com/ and sites like it allow you to back up your files (2GB for free - pay if you want more) with automatic scheduled backups. That way you catch the stuff in between DVD backups or you don't have to worry about scratching the DVD / losing them etc.

 

[persi & alley]

Thanks folks, I will consolidate your information and see what I can do. It is so nice to know there is a place on The Cat Site to get information other than just cats. Well, actually it is about cats since I am hoping to retreive my cat pictures from many years ago. Thanks again!