Laugh if you will.

My daughter brought her Acer Aspire 5742 laptop to me because it was running real slow. It had a 320GB HDD (WD Scorpio Blue) with only 28Gigs free! I cleared Temp Files and removed all the Games her boys had put on it and ran MBM and Checkdisc and restored to 62GB's free.
Then I thought it would be good to run Defrag for her as the laptop was running quite a bit quicker at this stage.
WRONG! Defrag on quick - took 2 hours to run! At a point about 85% through - a message popped up on the screen saying Disc was Failing. I let it finish Defrag and at this point it was after midnight on Saturday and so I thought I'd shut it down and carry on in the morning.
It wouldn't shut down straight away, so I went to bed and left it to do it's thing.
In the morning it had shut down so I pressed the Start button and got the message that no disc was found.
Tried Startup Repair which wouldn't work and then ended up in a Start Loop.
It would Start to Acer splash screen - then shut down and start again.
I took the HDD out and reinstalled it and tried again with the same results. I took the HDD out and hooked it in to my comp and hoped I might be able to transfer her data to my HDD.
I couldn't get it to show in BIOS or comp management. Now is where you can start laughing. I put the HDD in the Freezer overnight and connected it to my comp today.
Lo and behold - it worked! I was able to transfer ALL her necessary data to my comp. Now I can put the laptop HDD under the Hammer!
I had read about others who used the freezer and got the Failed HDD to work and thought it was a joke, but it worked for me.
I'll be able to install a new HDD for my daughter and transfer her data back for her.
She had not BACKEDUP at any time and the thought of losing all her music etc. has rammed it home.
I'm quite a few rungs up the "I love you dearly Dad ladder ". Should be worth a good Xmas present. Neil.

 

The freezing method has been known to revive some hard disks long enough for data backup.

It's a hit or miss method. Glad it worked for you.

 

Congratulations, Neil. I feel certain there were some anxious hours in the middle of that story. You have helped many. Good to hear the magic worked when it counted. All's well that ends well.

 

Been there done that. Worked 3 different times when I tried it. Have a friend that I told to do this and he did and ending up using the HD for a couple more years. He didn't keep anything important on it after he put it back in. Saved everything he needed to a thumb drive or Disk.

 

Thanks antik for your thoughts. There was more scepticism than anything when I put the HDD in a plastic bag and then into the freezer drawer. I'm now a convert as MrBill has been successful 3 times with his freezer too.
I was more concerned while the transfer was working as it took some 20 minutes to move the Gigs of Data she had. (a good 4.5 years collection).
Neil.

 

Don't put mine in the freezer. Back of the fridge on a top shelf for at least 24 hours. Then do the trick.

 

Your daughter is very lucky that you're so good with computers! I hope you've given her some guidance to prevent major problems like this in future. I'm a bit concerned now that my wife has switched from a Windows lap-top to a (gifted) iPad 2.

I have almost no knowledge of Apple devices. I've been using MS since Win 3.0, have experience with ALGOL (back in the UK in 1966), FORTRAN, CDC-6600 real-time FORTRAN at NASA, Singer-Link assembly language and Honeywell DDP assembly language in flight simulators. I don't have any plans to get into Apple stuff, unless MS screws up even worse on Win 10 than they did on 8 and 8.1!!

Quite honestly, the transition from WIN XP to 8.1 has been so painful, I've considered switching completely to Apple. Hopefully Win 10 will be easier. 8.1 seems to have been deliberately designed to p*** off everyone experienced in earlier MS systems. I sure hope Win 10 gets over this arrogance! It's Microsoft's last chance to keep me in the family after 25+ years!

 

It's always a nightmare on my end when someone wants their computer fixed (viruses, etc.), and they have no data backup to speak of. You can't just transfer their files onto your machine without infecting yourself.

 

That is why I tell them to bring me a 8Gb Thumb drive and save stuff then show them how to put it back on and how to save it again.

 

MrBill, I can't remember the exact numbers but the transfer was around 160GB'sand I didn't have enough thumb drives. Neil.

 

Tell them to bring a big HD over then.

 

Daughters rely on Dad's to have ALL the 'goodies'.

 

PNY 256GB Turbo Flash Drive

 

That ain't big enough.

They really need an external drive for some of the file loads I've seen.

 

James, was that the price or GB's???
I'm now awaiting my daughter finding her W7 DVD. You know how women put something away in a safe place - then conduct a spring clean to find it. Neil.

 

It's hard to remember exact figures, but certain PCs had as much as 100GB of data files to deal with.

One particular unit (Toshiba) did have the option of preserving personal files in a special folder on C drive during a system recovery. The last unit I worked on had no such data option, so everything was lost.

 

That USB drive was 256GB's in size James. I should think it was big enough but I wouldn't spend that much on a USB thumb drive. Neil.

 

Son-in-law found a stand-alone CD drive for me, since my lap-top doesn't have one. He found it at Goodwill, still in its original, unopened package for $4.00. I looked on Amazon, and their price for the same unit was $68!

Initially, I had the idea that moving things from my old computer to the lap-top, would be too tedious using the thumb drive I have. To my surprise, it actually worked fine - three trips was all it took.

I have started using the portable CD drive for back-ups.

 

MS has Easy Transfer via a special cable. I purchased the cable assembly which has special circuitry in a module between the USB connectors on the cable. (you will FRY the m/b if you connect a straight USB to USB cable between computers).
This in OS from W7 on. Located in Accessories > System Tools.
I just used this to transfer the Data from my W7 HDD to my daughters W7 laptop (where I had installed a new HDD for her).
It's a little easier to do than using USB Thumb drive - but whichever unit you use is up yo you. Neil.

 

Easy Transfer is not as good as I hoped it would be. My memory's a little vague, but I would not recommend it for transferring mail items belonging to Outlook, and it gave me issues with media files as well.

I was very disappointed with the tool to say the least. The best option is either a network transfer or an external drive of some sort.