two OS harddrives win7

two OS harddrives win7
my OS drive took a crap. Is it safe to try and see if I can get files of it by hooking it back up while running my new HD/OS??? Win7 64bit, cheers

 

any takers ?!?!?!?!?!

 

Greetings, yank101...

Should be no problem normally, but the "took a crap" part kinda bothers me. What sort of crap did it take: did it just die, or did it screech to a halt, or did it burst into flames, etc., etc.?

And: are these IDE drives, or SATA, or a mixture of the two?

 

Caliban it did the norm as any dying hd would. slowly at first then wouldnt load at all. it was a slow death and i should have save a backup. SATA. i just want to try and get any data i can off it. (if i can). just hoping (it has win7 on it) that it will no conflict with my new hd OS. cheers and thanks

 

Good morning...

The only reason I asked about the C.O.D. was concern about any damaged hardware (the old drive) causing even more damage if fired back up. Looks like you should be good to go safety-wise.

As far as boot order, SATA drives are configured in your machine's BIOS - enter your setup and set the new drive as Disk 1 and the damaged drive as Disk 2.

Or you could transfer the data via a discrete USB device, something like this.

 

ok thanks. yep its dead , it was only noticed as a SATA but not as a HD. thanks for the help and knowledge. jeff

 

Good morning...

Sorry to hear about the death of your hard drive. If the data it contains is extremely important there are forensics labs available (such as Ontrack) that offer good chances for retrieval but they are often quite expensive. Ontrack does offer a free online quote if you're interested.

If you can get the drive to spin up at all there are several free data recovery programs available here. And what type of drive is it? The hard drive's manufacturer might offer diagnostic software that may be able to fix some upper level problems - check here.

 

LOL too late the casualty has be put to a nice repose in a safe location. i believe it was seagate 1Trig. normally i wouldnt have disposed of it so quickly but i was cleaning as we're moving house in 23 days.
i have partitioned the drive but whats the best brand for backup? i have norton ghost 15 or 1.15 that i got with a laptop bought for the kids. from what i see it dosnt do anything special. any other info about partitioned drive you have would be handy! cheers mate, jeff