Yesterday my laptop failed to boot. Everything appears to be normal but each time I turn it on it hangs on Windows screen with a running bar. I cannot boot my laptop to the desktop. I tested the hard drive and it passed the test. I think that my hard drive is fine and the operating system is corrupted. I have very important files in my documents and I need to recover, transfer them to the desktop computer as soon as possible. How can I connect the laptop hard drive to a desktop computer?
It is nice that your hard drive passed the test. I think you have very good chances that your data is still good and you would be able to transfer it to the desktop computer. Here are some tips for connecting a laptop hard drive to a desktop computer:
1. You can use 2.5” hard drive adapter and connect the laptop hard drive directly to a desktop computer through the IDE connector on the system board. The desktop hard drive would be connected to IDE1 so you can connect the laptop hard drive to IDE2. After you boot the desktop computer the second hard drive would be detected and you can access it as a regular HDD. Now you can recover, transfer all needed files from the laptop hard drive to the desktop hard drive. Here are detailed instructions with pictures.
2. You can use an external USB enclosure for laptop hard drives. I think that would be the easiest and fastest way to access your data. You can find an external USB enclosure in any computer shop and it would cost you about $20-$30 or buy it here for $10. After you remove the laptop hard drive, place it inside the enclosure and connect to the desktop or another laptop computer via the USB cable. It is not necessary to install any drivers for the enclosure if the desktop PC runs Winodws 2000 or Windows XP. If the desktop PC runs Windows 98, then most likely you’ll have to install a driver for the enclosure before you can access the hard drive. The USB cable and the driver usually supplies with the external enclosure. Now you can access the laptop hard drive as a regular drive on your desktop/laptop computer.
November 15th, 2006 at 2:51 am
I have the opposite problem (sort of). The screen for my desktop, which is now several years old and in need of replacement, is broken. Rather than buy a new screen I am thinking of getting a new computer.
I was wondering whether it is possible to access the old harddrive to recover music and pictures without having to wait until I can get a new desktop / new screen. I have a laptop and have just purchased an external harddrive for my laptop - can either of these be used?
November 15th, 2006 at 8:57 pm
Dave,
You mentioned that you have an external hard drive for the laptop. Do you know if it has a laptop 2.5” hard drive inside or a desktop 3.5” hard drive? If the enclosure has a 3.5” HDD, then you can remove the hard drive from the desktop and install it inside the enclosure. Otherwise, you’ll probable have to wait for a new desktop and then attach the old drive as a slave and recover all personal files.
December 1st, 2006 at 12:51 pm
I have a compaq series 5000 desk top that had a problem with the hard drive. Someone told me i need a new operating system and it is better to get a new computer. So i bought a compaq laptop. Now i wonder if i can remove the hard drive and transfer the data to my laptop. I am not sure if it will connect or work.
December 2nd, 2006 at 7:06 pm
Bob,
It depends. If the old hard drive is dead and will not spin at all then you cannot recover data yourself. You’ll have to use a clean room recovery service – very expensive service. If the old drive doesn’t work because it has bad sectors or corrupted OS, you can attempt accessing the drive via an external USB enclosure.
Remove the hard drive from the old desktop computer and install it into an external USB enclosure for 3.5” hard drives. After that connect the enclosure to your laptop and see if the laptop can recognize the drive. If you can access the hard drive, transfer all needed data to your laptop.
You can find a 3.5” USB enclosure in any local computer store or on the internet.
December 3rd, 2006 at 7:10 am
My laptop recently crashed and I can no longr boot it up. I have an external 2.5″ harddrive (Firelite) that I use for storage. I took out the existing Toshiba harddrive and replaced it with my laptop harddrive (A Hitachi) and tried to connect it to my PC to transfer the files and recover my documents. But Windows is not detecting the harddrive, so I can’t transfer anything. It should be noted that the original external harddrive (Firelite/Toshiba) is driverless, so that could be a reason why it is not picking it up.
If it’s any use, the error i’m having with my laptop(HP Pavilion Ze5385US) is that it wont continue the boot past the Windows logo and instead gets stuck in an infinite rebooting loop. Here’s the error that flashes on screen for about half a second before it reboots:
“Page Fault in Nonpaged Area”
December 4th, 2006 at 12:36 am
Brad,
Regarding the error “Page Fault in Nonpaged Area”. I think you might have a faulty RAM. According to the maintenance and service guide for HP Pavilion ze5385us notebooks, you can access both memory slots from the bottom of the laptop. Here’s what you can try. If you have two RAM modules installed, remove them one by one and test the laptop after each removed module. If you have only one RAM module, move it from the slot A to the slot B. See if playing with RAM modules can help you successfully boot the laptop. Download Memtest 86+ utility (Link on the right side) and run the memory test to find out if you have a faulty RAM modules.
To test the hard drive you can use Hitachi’s drive fitness test (link on the right side) utility. It’s a free HDD test utility that works on most hard drives.
You mentioned that the laptop cannot pass Windows logo, so I assume the Hitachi drive is not completely dead and it spins when you install it into the external enclosure, right? I don’t know why Windows cannot detect the Hitachi drive; there shouldn’t be any compatibility issue. I have an external enclosure that I use with many different drives and never seen a problem. Take a look at the Hitachi drive, may be pins have a jumper (allows to set master/slave/cable select manually)? A generic USB enclosure usually has 2 USB connectors on the end that goes to a PC, so the hard drive gets enough power. What about your enclosure? If it has 2 USB connectors on one end, make sure both are connected to the PC. For some laptop hard drives getting power from 1 USB port would be enough, for some you must connect both USB connectors.
December 6th, 2006 at 8:03 am
Can I use a plain ol’ USB cable to connect my laptop to my desktop to transfer files? My CD-ROM died, so until I get a new one I need to transfer large amounts of data somehow. I also don’t have means to make a wireless network or LAN metwork or whatever it’s called… So, I was just wondering if data transfer is possible with just a USB cable. I tried just pluging them together, but I don’t get anything popping up, so I need help.
December 11th, 2006 at 10:50 am
Hello,
My laptop crushed, but the C Drive survived. I connected it to another computer via USB. I am able to view and access all the folders. I was first unable to access “My documents”, but found way to do it by taking ownership of the folder.
HOWEVER here is my problem, .. even though I can access “my documents” folder, and see all the files in there, including the size, etc, when I double click to open any of them, they do not work. It does not matter if it’s a picture, a notepad file, or other documents, music, etc. .. as if though they were encrypted or corrupted (i did not have a setting for them to be encrypted)
Any help would be great.. thank you.
Ella
December 11th, 2006 at 5:16 pm
i want to transfer movies for my regular computer to my laptop, but i dont know how to connect them directly. I also wanted to know how to connect the laptop to the tv, is there a usb wire with 3 imports, is that what i need.
December 11th, 2006 at 11:08 pm
Mara,
You cannot transfer data just using a regular USB cable. You have to use a crossover Ethernet cable and setup a network in order to access files on one PC directly from another PC. If you don’t know how to do that, then I would go with an external USB enclosure.
December 11th, 2006 at 11:17 pm
Ella,
Can you copy files from the laptop hard drive to the other computer? Do you get any error messages when you try drag-and-drop or open a file in My Documents?
December 11th, 2006 at 11:28 pm
Michael,
In order to connect the laptop and PC directly, it’s necessary to set up a network. It’s not as simple as just connecting both computers via a USB cable.
The easiest way to connect the laptop to TV is via S-video port using S-video cable.
December 12th, 2006 at 6:13 am
Hello.
Yes, I can copy them, drag them, no error message. Do you think They are corrupted?
I do remember that I was going to copy them to the CD, but they were big in file, and the CD was not (only 700 MB), so I deleted the temporary files that were going to be written to the CD. (which was the whole “my documents” folder copy… I don’t think that should damage anything, but just in case I thought I should say it.
So right now I have these files, pictures, music, but I can’t do anything with them. Yesterday I tried to upload a file from the folder, just a simple notepad file to the web and it said “invalid file”.
Any thoughts? Thank you very much.
Ella
December 12th, 2006 at 6:28 am
They all say they were modified on Saturday (the day I connected C Drive). Besides this folder all other folders are fine. Is there a way to retrieve a prior version of files? lol.. I must sound not very smart.. I just spent countless hours since then trying to figure this out.. If i try to open for example any music files, they can’t. I get the message that they can not open, the file might be corrupted. Any text files open, but they are “blank”.. if my move my mouse over them, there is something there, but nothing visible, .. but like I said, they are not empty, they still have the same file size as they had before. System restore would not help, since it’s “my documents” folder. I was lucky enough that my mom has the same laptop model, and so I put it in my mom’s laptop, worked just like mine, all programs, etc. I am not sure if I the folder did not work from the beginning.. it actually maybe did work, that’s why I mentioned that I was going to copy that folder to CD that was too small in the size and then deleted those temporary files that were waiting to be written to the CD. I also was trying to do the “file transfer wizard”, but it did not let me put it to the CD’s as well. After that I opened one of the files and from that point on I know that the files are “bad”
December 13th, 2006 at 11:48 pm
Sorry Ella,
I’m not really sure what is going on. I don’t know why you can copy files but cannot open them. Are you positive that files are not encrypted? The file name letters are black (not encrypted) or green (encrypted)? When you encrypt a file, the filename changes to green.
December 19th, 2006 at 6:58 am
Hi again.. I’m sorry I did not come back here since last post. No, they are not encrypted, the names are black.
I don’t have a clue of what to do anymore with this. I still have a hope that someone would know and maybe post something here. A friend of a friend might take a look at the C-Drive in a couple of weeks, if he has a chance.. I slowly started to get over the lost files, but it’s not easy seeing them there and not being able to access them.. very weird. No programs out there to retreive a previous version of a file? They all seem to say that they were modified the day that I connected the C-Drive (as posted above in more details). Either way.. thank you for your time, please let me know if you can think of anything else.
Ella
December 28th, 2006 at 8:21 pm
hi there,my laptop was smashed up but i managed to retrieve the harddrive as well as few other parts here and there,the problem i have now is i bought a 2.5 enclosure so i could transer files from the drive onto my desktop or my new laptop but i cant find the drive anywhere on either computer.
it came with a little driver disk but when i click setup it comes up with an error saying some file is missing,then it says all drivers are fully installed.
the external drive i brought is a blueye Xeasy portable hard drive model:U225 usb2.0
both my desktop and laptop recognise the new hardware but i cant find the drive to access my files.
is there something im missing?
December 29th, 2006 at 12:29 am
Helen,
If you connect the hard drive enclosure to a computer with Windows 2000 or Windows XP, you don’t need to load any drivers. The hard drive should be detected automatically. Here’s how it usually works:
1. You connect the external hard drive enclosure to a working computer. The balloon will pop up in the lower right corner and it should say “A new hard drive is detected… Blah-blah”.
2. The second balloon will appear “New hard ware is installed…Restart the computer”
3. You restart the computer, go to My Computer and you should see the external drive in there. Access this hard drive like a regular drive and transfer all needed files.
If the external hard dive will not appear in My Computer, then either the hard drive has been damaged or you got a bad enclosure. I got one of these “bad” enclosures. When I connect it to my desktop computer it bluescreens and reboots, but the same enclosure works perfectly with my laptops.
December 29th, 2006 at 8:18 am
You’re the greatest. You just saved me $650 on a new laptop.
January 4th, 2007 at 8:56 pm
My laptop died, so I salvaged the HD and stuck it in an external enclosure. I see the HD on my new PC now, but I can’t access the My Documents folder. I also can’t run some of my programs because they say they haven’t been installed on my computer. How do I fix this? Thanks in advance!
January 5th, 2007 at 6:52 pm
Hello,
I downloaded a virus recently and had problems with XP. So I bought an enclosure and followed the steps above to pull my files off my hard drive onto another computer. The problem now is that all folders are visible except “\documents and settings\milton…” where all my music and pictures are. I attempted to run the File Transfer wizard and it lists the subfolders “My Music, My Pictures”, etc. But, when I try to access them via Explorer it says “F:\Documents and Settings\Milton… is not accessible. Access Denied.”
What do you think is going on?
Milton
January 6th, 2007 at 10:25 pm
Hi all,
I figured out a solution to my problem! I simply had to take “Ownership” of the files on the removed Hard Drive. This Microsoft KB article describes the process: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308421
Good luck…
Milton
January 7th, 2007 at 9:13 am
Yoski,
You cannot run programs from the external hard drive, you actually have to install them on your new PC.
Do you get any messages when you try accessing My Documents folder? Check out comments 21 and 22. Milton posted a possible solution in the comment 22, may be that’s your problem?
February 7th, 2007 at 3:40 pm
HI,
Milton’s suggestion (22) does not work for me as the complete laptop, now accessible via USB, does not allow me to share the my documents. Any other suggestions?
Scott
July 11th, 2007 at 8:43 am
Hi,
My IBM T40 Windows XP operating system crashed and then kept on going into the blue screen. The hard drive is in the early stages of dying and has corrupted the operating system beyond repair. I was able to get a new hard drive, use the recovery CDs, and transfer my files using a 2.5″ USB adaptor. However, I am wondering if there is a way to transfer the wireless network settings from the old hard drive to the new one? Thanks.
August 2nd, 2007 at 2:05 am
Hello I have a problem wih my external case.
I have a ATA 80 gb 2.5″ and when I connect it to my laptop it does not appear in My PC, but it does appear the little green logo on the left hand side of the windows tool bar.
What should I do? I have a Windows XP home edition
Thanks
August 2nd, 2007 at 7:26 am
Julian,
If it is a brand new hard drive then you’ll have to partition and format it. I think it could be your problem.
Go to Control Panel – Administrative Tools – Computer Management – Disk Management. Can you see your external hard drive in there?
You’ll have to initialize the hard drive, then partition and format it.
September 2nd, 2007 at 1:47 pm
I had connected a usb cable from my laptop to desktop inorder to try and transfer files from the laptop to the desktop. The desktop immediately quit working as soon as the usb connection was made. Now the only thing working on the desktop are the fan and light. Can’t shut power on/off.
Does anyone know if the motherboard is fried?
September 25th, 2007 at 3:04 pm
I got my old laptop harddrive connected to my new computer alright (using a usb connection) and I see it in the “My computer” menu but when I try to open it up to get my old files it tells me I need to format my drive. Is there any hope to get my stuff or should I just format it and all is lost?
September 30th, 2007 at 10:01 pm
Cat,
I think there is a chance to recover personal data from the hard dive by using data recovery software (something like GetDataBack by Runtime Software).
I think it this case you’ll have to scan the hard drive for raw data. This is just a guess but if the data is important it’s worth trying.
November 5th, 2007 at 2:24 am
I recently lost the motherboard on my Dell Inspiron, but the hard drive was intact. So far I’ve been able to retrieve all documents, but I’m still missing Outlook data (calendar entries, email, etc.) and similar data from the Timeslips billing program. If I connect the hard drive to my desktop using an external enclosure, will I be able to export the data I need from the laptop HD? No recent backup files were already available, so that’s essentially what I’m trying to make from the old drive. The programs have all been reloaded on the desktop.
November 8th, 2007 at 11:27 pm
Lance,
You’ll find Outlook data in .pst file. Scan the hard drive for .pst file and back it up. After that import .pst into the new installation of Outlook.
Cannot help you with the Timeslips program, I’m not familiar with this software.
November 14th, 2007 at 4:27 pm
I have a Toshiba Satellite 1905-S301 laptop. Few weeks back when I started it, a dialog box opened up saying there is some problem with the registry. I have tried connecting my laptop hard drive using USB enclosure to my new Mac Book Pro, however it mentions that the disk you inserted was not readable by this computer due to unrecognizable filesystem. My question is if I connect this hard drive to Windows XP pc, will I be able to transfer the important files then? Its hard to understand that the Desktop will have access to the files which originally require administrator password to log into. I seek some advise on this. Thank you.
November 14th, 2007 at 8:57 pm
Rahul,
If you connect this hard drive to a computer with Windows XP, you shouldn’t have any problem transferring personal files, unless the hard drive has some kind of mechanical problem.
In this case you’ll have to take ownership of the files on the external hard drive.
November 15th, 2007 at 9:15 am
Hi,
I just tried connecting my laptop HD with USB enclosure with my desktop (windows xp pro). The baloons on the bottom right state that the drive is ready to use but I do not see the corresponding icon in My Computer. I checked device manager and Disk management, and both show that the device is working properly and healthy. In Disk Management, It mentions the details of the Hard drive but when I right click it, the options for Open and Explore cannot be selected. Please advise me what to do now. This hard drive has roughly 5 years of my work on it. Thanks.
November 15th, 2007 at 9:27 am
Rahul,
First of all, try rebooting the desktop PC. In some cases you have to reboot computer after you attach an external hard drive.
Most likely your external USB enclosure cable has two USB connectors on one end. Make sure both USB connectors are connected to the PC so the hard drive is getting enough power.
November 15th, 2007 at 12:22 pm
Hi,
I have figured out what was wrong with the hard drive and currently I am transferring file (folders infact) to my office desktop
My USB enclosure has just 1 USB cable. Actually I came to know that I had this software Roxio GoBack on my old hard drive which was failing the desktop to display the hard drive in My Computer. I had a feeling that my hard drive is not damaged. So I made the jumper setting of the old HDD to master again(I had previously changed it to slave) and rebooted the computer. As soon as it rebooted, I pressed F12 to enter the BIOS set up, where I selected the USB controller to boot from. Once I did this, my old HDD came into action as I could see Roxio GoBack software. Pressing Spacebar, disabling it and clicking continue, desktop asked for a reboot (this was expected as windows registry in my old HDD had some problems). I went to BIOS set up again to change the boot to hard disk of desktop. and shut the computer down to change jumper position of laptop HDD to slave again. Starting the computer and logging in, I could see my hard drive in My Computer (I was ecstatic at this moment!!). As mentioned in the previous post (thanks to Laptop Freak), I gained the ownership of the folders I wanted and now the transfer process is on its way!!!
Roxio Go Back software is a disaster!! Better remove it before it creates more problem! (My advise) In last 5 years of installing this software, I used it just once which did not create a restore point where I wanted it to restore to!! I guess it has never helped me!
November 28th, 2007 at 9:40 am
Hi, I have the same problem as scott: my laptop crashed but the HDD works fine. Now i connected the HDD to my work laptop with a USB-connector, where then the HDD works as an external hard disk. I had on my old laptop a password with my user profile, and now i cannot access the folder on the old hard disk X:/my documents/USERNAME as i get a reply ‘access denied’. Milton’s suggestion of changing user rights does not work, as i am logged on my work cpu with a different username.
Any ideas?
# scott Says:
February 7th, 2007 at 3:40 pm
HI,
Milton’s suggestion (22) does not work for me as the complete laptop, now accessible via USB, does not allow me to share the my documents. Any other suggestions?
Scott
November 28th, 2007 at 8:53 pm
Laura/FL,
I fixed the link.
Milton’s suggestion didn’t work for you because he linked you to a wrong page.
You don’t have to change user rights, you have to take ownership of the My Documents folder.
December 23rd, 2007 at 10:58 pm
Hi,
Can i connect my external CPU to my laptop monitor… Actually i am having a laptop and i am planning to get a desktop CPU but i want my laptop screen should work for that external CPU… So that i will not purchase any Monitor… i will swap between laptop CPU and Desktop CPU…. but the monitor will be only one that is laptop screen….
January 12th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Hi ..
My laptop OS crashed suddenly .. I have no recovery cd’s . I have some documents that i need to transfer real urgently, so i connected the laptop hd to an external case and tried copying it to my desktop. But it says access denied cause my documents ere passord protected on my laptop …
Is there any ay to go around this???????
Please Help …..
January 12th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
Ravi,
You’ll have to take ownership over the folder and files you are trying to transfer to the desktop computer. Apparently a lot of people experiencing the same problem trying to transfer files, so here I explained how to take ownership over folders and files.
January 12th, 2008 at 9:54 pm
Thanks so much man .. Big Help ……
Cheers
January 13th, 2008 at 5:03 am
Hi again ….
in my task manager, the system process is always running at 99% and my system is getting real slow .. any idea what the problem could be and how to fix it …
My ram is fully functional ….
I have repeatedly changed my hard disk …
Any ideas????
February 6th, 2008 at 8:15 am
Ok I have a dell Inspiron 1200, the Hd crashed, so I bought a new one, about a week after the HD crashed, the cd/dvd drive also crashed so I have no access to the cd drawer.
I have access to a IDE adapter and think I am going to use it however I need a little more of an explanation on what to connect to in my desktop to have the desktop see the laptop’s HD, above you said connect the IDE adapter cable to IDE 2 is that on the motherboard or is that the same IDE cable that is connected to the harddrive on my desktop the cable has a second connection point on the cable.( I think that is used for a slave ) I have not opened the tower yet and maybe should have looked before asking but I thought I would ask anyway.
February 6th, 2008 at 8:44 pm
Lance,
Most likely right now you have a DVD drive connected to the IDE 2. You can temporarily unplug the DVD drive and plug your adapter with the laptop hard drive instead. In this case you’ll have only one drive (laptop hard drive) attached to the secondary IDE channel and there shouldn’t be any conflict between drives. The laptop hard drive will be detected and recognized by the computer.
No it’s not the same cable. The desktop hard drive is connected to the primary IDE channel. If you connect the laptop hard drive to the same cable there could be a conflict between drives. You can avoid the conflict and make it work if you set the desktop hard drive as a master and the laptop hard drive as a slave, but you’ll have to find a small jumper for the laptop hard drive and then find out with pins you have to short in order to set it as a slave drive. If you connect the laptop hard drive to the same cable with the desktop hard drive without configuring drives, most likely both drives will be conflicting each other and one of the drives or both of them will not be detected.
February 9th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
hello i purchased a 2.5 dd enclouser im using my hd from my lap top. i want to recover the files from this drive but it keeps telling me to format.you state that i have to set the drive to master.on the hard drive the master
has no pin covered the slave does im talking about the little white four pin plug how do i set it to master? thanks a head of time.
February 16th, 2008 at 6:40 am
I just wanted to say a HUGE thank you to you for making this info available and easy to understand. My laptop ended up with a corrupted registry, and none of the possible fixes worked. So Dell told me my only option was to reformat the hard drive and lose all my data. Or I could pay $250 - $350 for someone to “rescue” the documents and pics from my hard drive before reformatting.
I tried your solution and it worked like a charm! I used an external USB enclosure for my laptop hard drive and saved my important files onto my desktop hard drive. It was easy and fast, just as you said it would be. I encountered no problems of any kind.
I am SO relieved to have this nightmare solved. A thousand thanks!
February 17th, 2008 at 7:26 am
now what if the files are in your desktop portion of the harddrive and since you cant get to them from the original computer will you be able to acess them from an external device or will you need special skills please help me contact me here or my email campos.city@gmail.com
March 9th, 2008 at 9:58 pm
This is exactly the site I was looking for. Reading all the above messages gave me a few ideas for my problem.
I dropped my laptop (HP) with all my kids pictures saved on the HD. The laptop WILL boot up, but everything is VERY slow - takes 30 minutes to copy 1 small picture to flash that use to take 10 seconds. I have 100’s of pictures. To make matters worse…some pictures say they can not be copied (something about system redundancy).
Does this sound like I damaged the RAM or something more serious. Any ideas how to fix? If not, sounds like I need to do what you all are doing:
Try a HD enclosure transfer to desktop via USB.
Any thoughts?
Thank you so much!
March 10th, 2008 at 8:02 pm
Lana,
This sounds more like a problem with the hard drive, not the memory. Did you notice if the laptop is making repetitive clicking sounds coming from the hard drive area when you are trying to copy pictures? If it does, you have a problem with the hard drive.
I think you may have better luck if you use an external USB enclosure. In this case, if you cannot transfer one particular picture, go to the next one. Hopefully you can get some of them.
March 11th, 2008 at 12:05 am
thanks for the input. There are no unusual noises coming from the the laptop at all. Guess I’m just going to suck it up, get the enclosure and HOPE it works!!!
Thanks again.
April 14th, 2008 at 3:52 am
I was reading the above comments and they are extremely helpful. My Gateway 5350 crashed and it continues the reboot loop from the safemode screen. I cannot get it to boot up from any mode. I recently purchased a Dell Insp. 1525 but waiting for it to arrive. I was wondering if there is anything I need to know about connecting these two together using an enclosure? I have not yet purchased an enclosure yet so any advice would be greatly helpful!
Thanks in advance, have a great day!
April 18th, 2008 at 3:49 am
Hi,
I have an exact problem but this is my pc’s hard disk. For my pc, i cannot even turn on windows.
Read the posts and was very helpful. Encountered a different problem however. My hard disk is connected via a IDE to a usb cable which is then connected to my laptop. My laptop detects the hard disk and and am able to open it on the My Computer icon. However, instead of detecting it as a 40gb hard disk, it is only detected as a 10mb disk with 7mb of space being used up. There is only 1 file present when i click explore. The file is labelled c; with a size of 46kb+.
Stuck now as I really do not know what the problem is and do need to remove some data before i can reformat this drive. Appreciate any assistance you can render.
April 18th, 2008 at 10:57 am
Thankyou so much for the valuable information. I am just going to buy this usb enclosure.
God Bless You!
May 1st, 2008 at 3:26 pm
Recently my Laptop IBM - Think Pad T40 stoped working. My windows can not start in any mode. It boots up to windows option then just stays there forever.
I tried to connect my Hard drive through USB, but my computer is not detecting it. I even bought new IDE connector case but still the issue is same. Infact even working HDD from any IBM thinkpads are not detected. Tried it on many laptops and computer, never works.
Can any one help please. I have very important data to recover from Hard Disk.
May 2nd, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Ali Khan,
Sound that you have a problem with the hard drive.
Here’s what you can try.
1. Download a copy of live-linux CD, for example Knoppix (I love this distro, very useful).
2. Boot your laptop from the Knoppix CD. The environment will be very similar to Windows.
3. If the hard drive is detected, it will appear on the desktop. You can click on the hard drive and see if your files are readable.
4. Knoppix comes with CD/DVD burning software, you’ll find it in the start menu. You can use this software to burn all personal files on a CD or DVD.
5. Alternatively, you can transfer files to a USB flash drive formatted with FAT or FAT32 (not NTFS) but before you can do that you’ll have to play with USB drive properties (right click on the drive and then go to Properties) in order to enable writing to the USB drive. This is more advanced but you’ll figure out.
May 8th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
How can I recover *.tib files back to my hard drive?
– I backed up my files using an acronis software before I installed a new OS in it. How can I copy those files back into my computer?
Thank you so much for all your help!
May 8th, 2008 at 11:08 pm
Cathy,
I’m not familiar with this software but let me guess. Here’s what I found about *.tib files.
Where did you save the *.tib file? Is it on a separate partition on the hard drive?
May 9th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
I might have missed it if someone else asked the same question but my laptop boots to the password screen and I can access the shared files vie ethernet (wireless is not working). My question is : I would like to know if there is a way to access files on my drive that are not shared. I tried remote desktop and a few other things but the only thing I can access are my shares. Unfortunately this does not help when a majority of my work is not shared.
Any ideas without going to the store to purchase anything? I was going to directly connect them through USB but read a post that scarred me about messing up my desktop.
Any suggestions would be GREATLY appreciated!
Thank you
May 12th, 2008 at 1:18 am
Hi,
My DELL inspiron 9300 laptop hard-disk crashed along with optical drive. I have got the new parts in place now. I am connecting my old hard disk in an USB enclosure to the laptop. I cannot see the drive in mycomputer though it shows up in disk management as healthy. It is FAT 32.
Please help me to recover the data. Do I need any recovery software? thanks,
mkb
May 13th, 2008 at 6:35 pm
First of all, try to login in Safe mode and then use user name: Administrator without any password. You may be able to log in, change the password and then login in normal mode.
You’ll have to remove the hard drive, install it into an external USB enclosure ($15-20) and then connect it to another computer.
Also, you can find software tools to reset administrator’s password on XP computer. For example Locksmith in ERD Commander boot CD.
May 13th, 2008 at 6:44 pm
mkb,
If the old drive appears in the disk management but not in My Computer, it’s possible that the file structure on the hard drive is corrupted. In this case you’ll have to use data recovery software. It’s still possible to get some personal files with the data recovery software even though the hard drive will not appear in My Computer.
BTW, I posted your question here.
May 14th, 2008 at 6:44 pm
I pulled my hard drive and switched it out with my wife’s computer and had to redo my Windows authorization again but was able to get to and backup my files. I did a virus scan, check disk and defrag with no errors - I placed to drive back into the original laptop and the same thing happens where it goes to the password screen but everything is unresponsive (system won’t recognize function keys at startup to get into safe mode).
How can I be sure this still might not be a hard drive error issue vs hardware. If this is hardware is there any way short of spending a lot of money to have it diagnosed. I’m worried the repair might cost more than a new laptop.
Any ideas?
Thank you
May 29th, 2008 at 8:46 am
hi,
i have toshiba 305cdt laptop, and when my windows starting up i got this error message:
“cmdninst has caused an error in KRNL386.EXE” and it hang.
any reply would be greatly appreciated,
June 14th, 2008 at 8:09 pm
Thank you in advance for providing your expertise. I had a Toshiba Satellite A15-s129 and after 6yrs it died and said that the system32.exe file is missing. I’m assuming that it’s my OS, I have removed the hard drive and from your previous advice going to buy an enclosure, I just want to make sure that my new laptop (HP)will not be harmed when I download the old files. Also will this work with Windows Vista?