Resolved How do you recover data from a crashed hd ?

I tried searching this forum but followed one thread, but did not answer my question. In Particular I would like to know what the solution is for a logical drive failure, not a mechanical failure. Does one need to purchase special software? I was hoping to install failed drive as a slave, in another computer running windows xp. but I never done that before. What are the steps involved in doing it this way?

 

I have a pata hd. Thanks for the quick reply.

 

Hi Frank,

Following from Pete's advice we really do need to know your system specifications to answer this, please make sure you include make and model of the failed HD in your next post as well.

We encourage all members to enter their system details, it could help resolving this and any future issues you may have.

 

I just fixed this issue on my WinXP-SP3 tower. I got an irreparable disk failure in the middle of the Windows boot. None of the repair console's fixes would work and all the various "help" consultants said the only way was a complete reload where I would lose all the data and all the installed software programs.

I bought another PATA drive, moved the damaged one to the slave postion and loaded WinXP from the original eMachines restore disk. It took a few hours to get from SP1 to SP3 and to get the hundreds of MS Updates dating back to my original purchase 5 years ago.

Once up and running, I was able to transfer all the data from the old disk (now called the F: drive). I then proceeded to download all the free software I'd previously had, re-loaded Office 2003 from the DVD I have and got the latest Quicken.

I have since cleaned out the damaged XP from the F: drive and cleaned it up.

I now have a 320GB C: drive and a 160GB F: drive and I got everything back. It was about $70 for the new PATA disk drive and $60+ for Quicken.

Initially, I had planned to move may portable back-up drive into the C: slot, but found that was a SATA box.

So I'm still a bit on the slow side, but I can't type any faster! Additional RAM is the final step, as I only have 512K and there's actuay room for 2G.

 

Thank you Pete, Wildfire and Frank Damp. I have been pretty busy, but i plan to follow up on the suggestions. Thanks for the detailed explanation of what you did Frank Damp. ....also a Frank

 

Actually what I had was a bad mother board not a bad HD, I have installed the drive into a a working computer, as slave. I can view, that computer, but I don't know if I can for example, view and print a program that is in that HD to the same wireless printing. I think, plan to google a search on how to transfer data from the slave HD to the master HD. I dont know if I should start a new thread.


I had a recovery program, I guess I can't name the product. But that had been installed on the computer that had the Mother Board failure. I made a mistake and pushed the power button, and was prompted if I wanted to boot safe mode or boot windows normally. That brought up my system back in action. I decided to buy the product, since it saved me so much time.