[MWG]

Hi folks!

I've got a laptop with a sick hard drive. XP will no longer boot up, and when I boot from my XP CD and use the recovery console, chkdsk stops at 61% and says it has encountered unrecoverable errors on the drive.

I've read a number of similar situations here, and have tried just about everything I could find, but no luck so far. The most recent was an attempt to do a Repair on the installation - it deleted a number of files, but wasn't able to recreate the Windows directory - so it got stumped at that point.

So, I know I'll have to replace the drive, but I really want to try to get my data first, if possible. I can't install a second copy of XP on the drive, as it reports errors and halts whenever I try. I've tried to install a copy of XP on my 10 gig external drive to see if I could boot from that, but no luck with that so far...

My laptop doesn't have a floppy drive. I have another computer here running XP that I'm using to try to find solutions. I guess at this point my main hope is to be able to somehow gain access to files on my laptop, transfer them to my external drive, and from the external to my other computer, with as many iterations as needed to get everything. Is there any way that you folks can think of that would allow me to have access to the data on the hard drive AND to be able to copy it over to the external?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance, folkses!
-Mike

[SICS]

Hi Mike welcome to the community!

This process is going to require you to buy some hardware, and do some hardware removal and installation.

You are going to need to first purchase a hard drive converter that will take the 2.5 inch drive from the laptop and convert it to a 3.5 inch drive that is used in your PC. You can look at a sample here: http://www.bixnet.com/adfor25to35h.html or just do a google search for a place to buy one if you don't want to buy it from that place.

Once you have the converter you'll have to open the laptop. On the bottom of the laptop you'll find a cover to the hard drive, you'll have to open that up and remove the hard drive. Connect the adapter to the drive and put the drive into your PC.

Windows will not boot up finding the new drive. If the drive can be read you'll be able to pull the data off of it, but draging and dropping from the lap top drive to your main hard disk drive or any other back up medium.

If the drive is too damaged and can not be read, the only other solution would be is to use a data recovery service such as drive savers, but that could get expensive.

Hope this helps

[MWG]

That is beautiful! I'll track that nifty little device down, even if I have to have the thingy delivered!!

The best part is, it would let me grab the files directly (whichever are still accessible), then wipe the drive and send it for replacement!

Thank you VERY much!!
-Mike

[SICS]

You are welcome! Let us know how things turn out

[chandan]

html programing

[Paul]

Originally Posted by chandan

html programing

sorry?

[MWG]

Glitch in the matrix?