Hard Drive Toast

[lutrel]

The hard drive is toast in my Alienware X51, I can't even get my other computers to read it using a usb drive adapter, which sucks because I'd really like to retrieve some of the files from it.  I pulled the trigger on a Alienware Alfa 2 with all the bells and whistles, so I should be back on padding somebody's scores with in a week.

[Bizman]

If you're trying to read a Windows disk with another Windows and if you've been using a password to log into the defect drive, a working Windows will show your profile folder as empty.

However, if you use a Linux live USB stick or CD it often can read the password protected profile, allowing for copying the files on an external disk.

[Hungry]

Circumstances may be different but the last time that happened to me I put the new drive in then put the bad drive back in as a slave and was able to recover my mail and pictures ect.

Just a thought

[lutrel]

A friend of mine has a linux machine that we are going to try to read it with on Monday; hopefully that will get me in to retrieve the files.

[Bizman]

If your USB drive adapter was able to find and identify the disk, Linux should be able to read it as long as it can find the file system.

If the file structure has broken, there's still hope. There's both free and inexpensive recovery software which might find at least some of your files.

[lutrel]

Wasn't able to crack the bad hard drive, I ordered a new hard drive for the computer, going to fix it and give it to the wife as it's only three years old and is many times faster than her old machine; still waiting for my new Alfa 2.

[ACE]

Buy a desktop