CAA: Christian Anime Alliance

My hard drive is messed up and I have to get a new one. However, since the problem was a hardware problem and not software, my dad thinks we should be able to retrieve any files that are still intact by hooking the old hard drive up as an external drive. Would this work, and if so how would I go about hooking up a regular hard drive as an external drive? I have nothing backed up (yes I know that was incredibly not smart) so retrieving any files at all woul be very very nice.

You can buy an external hard drive mount and place the old drive in it. They come in USB or firewire models. If you can get one of those, you can probably pull your data off with it.

It all really depends how much damage has been done to the harddrive.

I'm wondering why you need to make it an external drive? I'd think you have just as much chance connecting it as a second drive internally and trying to get the data off. (In the BIOS, change the boot order so the new hard disk is booted first before the old (not working) one.)

Thanks for the help Mith and W4C. I can't try either approach until I get my new hard drive which I ordered online, but hopefully once I get it I will be able to retrieve whatever files are still intact.

Just to be safe, you did get the correct size harddrive right?

Mr. SmartyPants wrote:Just to be safe, you did get the correct size harddrive right?

That's the whole reason I got it online. I went to Dell.com and got essentially the same hard drive as my original.

If you havn't replaced the harddrive yet try useing a Live CD to boot your system and look at the hardrive

If my memory serves me correctly, there is an open source thing called "the ultimate boot CD." If you can get one of those, you might be albe to run some diagnostics on the drive from that - but it's iffy if you'll be able to use the software (some of it is pretty obscure stuff).

- Just FYI.

First of all, did the hard drive go kuput or just file corruption?


Don't use "the ultimate boot CD" its a low level tool for people who know only enough to hurt themselves. (no offence)(much experience with stup boot cds)

If you don't want to keep the drive set the jumper to slave and copy the data.

If you do want to keep, leave in the position of slave and after you get the data, reformat the hard drive, and keep for storage(iff its good)

not that hard

Dell

AGITA wrote:Don't use "the ultimate boot CD" its a low level tool for people who know only enough to hurt themselves. (no offence)(much experience with stup boot cds)

I've never had any trouble with it, and I used it at work for quite some time.

*shrugs*

Mithrandir wrote:I've never had any trouble with it, and I used it at work for quite some time.

*shrugs*

Sorry did'nt mean to sound hatefull. Reads diffrent than it sounded in my head. But its just that i've had and have seen bad experiences with it. don't trust it but mabey its changed in the last while. Tried hirens?

Anyway did anything solve your HD problem?