Lost my file sys.

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by Leader, Oct 15, 2009.

  1. Leader

    Leader Private E-2

    My computer quit working, I couldn't get it to restore without formatting so I restored to factory settings on another hard drive.
    Put original HD in as slave, and Win XP didn't see it.
    Everest found it but it doesn't seem to have a file system on it.
    It was NTFS.
    Anyone know of a way I can retrieve my files from the old hard drive?
     
    Leader, Oct 15, 2009
    #1
  2. plodr

    plodr MajorGeek Super Extraordinaire Moderator Staff Member

    I'm confused. Why would you restore another hard drive to factory conditions on a computer that wasn't having any problems.
    Bad computer: remove the hard drive and attach it to a working computer by a) USB adapter b) USB enclosure for a hd c) installing as slave, which you've done. Don't do any factory restore on either computer.
     
    plodr, Oct 15, 2009
    #2
  3. Leader

    Leader Private E-2

    Drive A was in computer A and it quit working. It has some VERY important files on it. I DO NOT want to loose these files.
    I put drive B into computer A and restored it to factory settings.
    Mounted drive A as a slave & Win XP didn't see it.
    Looked at computer through Everest and it saw drive A and said "unknown file system".
    Drive A had been running just fine for years with NTFS file system.
    I need to be able to get my files OFF drive A.
    Drives are 3.5" IDA drives.
    Most other computers I have access to are SATA drives running Vista.
     
    Leader, Oct 17, 2009
    #3
  4. plodr

    plodr MajorGeek Super Extraordinaire Moderator Staff Member

    I understand now.

    Boot the computer with a linux live cd and drive A attached by USB. Hopefully it will see the hd (linux can read files when windows can't). Put in a large capacity thumb drive in another USB port and copy the files you want to the thumb drive.
    I always copy because if something goes wrong and you chose move, everything is gone; if you choose copy and something goes wrong, the file still remains on the original device and you can try to copy over again.
    Warning: USB sticks are generally formatted as FAT32. FAT32 has a file limit size of 4GB. If any files are close to 4GB, you might get an error while trying to copy.

    Once the files you want are safely copied off the corrupt hd, you can decide if you want to try and repair the file system rather than restore/recover and start over with all the updates.
     
    plodr, Oct 17, 2009
    #4

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