You need to hook your failing hard drive up as a secondary drive (not as a boot drive) to your friend's machine (you can use yours once the new one is installed if you want to wait) and see if Windows can detect the files on it, if not I'll ask for some extra help in that area. As for Windows installation on your new disk follow Clean Install Windows 7 once the drive is installed. If you have any questions feel free to ask.
Hello !
After multiple failures, and before hooking the failing HDD to my friend's computer, I actually could finally boot my failing PC using Hiren's Boot CD and the Mini XP version.
Bad news is, I tried to do a CHKDSK command, and the command didn't work, the failing drive could not be read.
Tried to use the Windows explorer, but the software would freeze trying to read the C:\ drive, not being able to access it.
The drive manager tool can detect there is a C: Disk, but again it cannot have acess to the data in it.
Does it mean the HDD is actually failing due to a mechanical failure (not logical, as I hoped) ? Is it possible that I couldn't run a CHKDSK command cause I tried doing so in a Windows XP version whereas I had Windows 7 ?
What are the next steps if you don't have access to the files ? Cause honestly, I don't really care about the computer, it's 7 years old, I was gonna replace it this year anyway, but I wanna get my data back.
The HDD is an Toshiba one, and the tool provided by Toshiba only can format the HDD from what I could read : Toshiba HDD Recovery Utility
It also exists in Hiren's Boot CD, but as I said, I wanna recover my data first before trying to fix my computer.
I'll try to use a Linux OS tonight.
Thanks for everything.
When it is Toshiba, the scopes are limited, unfortunately.
You can try another thing ..... remove the HDD off this computer, apply it to another working computer with ample free space available, and then see if it is accessible or not. If not, you may follow it: Recover files by partition recovery with partition magic - MiniTool Partition Wizard.
Hi everyone.
Thanks for the tips, Linux Mint worked perfectly, I could acess my files and recover most of it (though I am still not sure if some files are corrupted or not, I already found some weird files named "ntuser.dat").
Is there a way to restore/repair the old HDD ?? Is there a software like SeaTools that can do it, but from the Linux Mint environment? Should I just format it and reinstall Windows ?
Format the full HDD and see if you can install windows on it. If this attempt fails, you might need a new HDD.
I am not aware of any mechanism that can repair bad sectors on a Toshiba disc.
Uneo just for the heads up there is another option and this is it - I use this as it is so easy too and I prefer the bootable disk - personally
BOOTABLE UBUNTU
Make a bootable Ubuntu disk http://www.ubuntu.com/download
Set the BIOS to boot from the optical when the machine boots it will show you a screen with TRY or INSTALL > select TRY not INSTALL
When it is finished - it takes very little time you will get a screen like in the pic .
Open the drive you want > User and dig down until you get to the data / settings you may be able to copy / paste the material you want to an external source or other installed drive doing this.
I am not sure if it will but I have recovered tons of data etc using this method both on "dead" or just plain drives that you cannot get data from using Windows.
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