Knackered harddisk?

Hi,

My 'software' issues have now become hardware issues, so I've moved forum...

The origins of my problem are here: http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=166127

My current issue is:

Dad has now bought himself a new machine, so I don't have to worry about getting windows working on the old one, but he wants/needs data off the old drive (photos, mp3's). I'm trying to connect the old harddrive to my laptop, using a SATA to USB cable. I can see the drive in Disk Management, but cannot assign a drive letter to it. I get an error message saying that it's not up to date, please refresh and try again, but it won't work. A google search has shown me that lots of people have posted similar problems online, but I can't see a solution anywhere. I even installed SP1 on my laptop (Vista Ultimate) to see if that helped. All it seems to have done is waste 2 hours!

PS. When I connect the drive to my XP desktop machine (old and slow) it can see the drive and gives it a letter, but when I double click or right click on it, it crashes explorer, so I can't get to see what's on the disk and copy what I need.

Please help!

 

Instead of trying to look at the drive yourself and crashing explorer, try using a file recovery program to scan the disk for you. Use search terms that will recover the things you want like (.mp3/.jpg/etc.). You could also try checking the disk for errors (right click properties then Tools) for error checking. maybe after repairing any errors and a restart you will be able to access the drive.

 

Any recommendations for a free recovery program - most of the ones I have seen have a 64k limit on files that can be saved, or you can't save at all.

Also, I can't do Properties>Tools, as Explorer crashes when I try and do anything with the dodgy drive.

 

There are free boot disks you can download that include recovery programs, google "Ultimate Boot Cd" and see if it has a recovery option in it.

I didn't mean to access the drive (right click properties) from within explorer! try doing it from My Computer and even if explorer complains its erroring, try running it anyway. I often ignore the error message and even Doctor Watson and go ahead and do what I want anyway if I can, before clicking on their OK buttons.