My computer crashed, who can I get to read my hard drive and retrieve files?

Question

My PC died, cannot read any recovery discs, either in Floppy or CD drives, says that I have no drives in machine. All I want are the jpg's off of the hard drive.
Then I will put in a new hard drive and start over. Does anyone know how much it could cost to retrieve info from a hard drive
and why is it so difficult to do this yourself.??

Thank you

Answer 1

Not difficult, you just gotta know how to do it. If you put in the new hard drive and load up your initial software disks and get it running, you can install the original hard drive as a slave. It will recognize the drive but doesn't need the boot sector.

Let me know if that helps. Cause I have a feeling there is something else going on based on yuour comments.

Answer 2

You can do a parallel install where you reinstall the OS into another directory on the same hard drive. When it comes up, back up your data. Then you can keep on keeping on with the parallel install, format the drive and start fresh or,,,

Remove your old hard drive.
Install a new hard drive
Install the OS on the new drive.
Once your system is up and stable, set the jumper on the new drive to master and set the jumper on your old drive to slave.
Slave the old drive to the new drive, boot the system and copy your files to where ever you want.

This is what someone else is going to do if you take it to them and pay them. Slave your drive to their drive, copy the files, burn a CD or DVD and charge you for 2 hours worth of work.

Do it yourself, it's not hard and it's a whole lot cheaper!

Now this is all based on the fact that the drive works and your OS died. If the drive died then you have no choice but to pay large money to recover the files you really can't live without.

Answer 3

My cousin almost had a crashed hard drive, and it wasn't being detected half the time in the BIOS. We ended up using HDD Regenerator on it and it way able to recover 90% of the data and then we did a standard chkdsk and recovered almost all of the data that was otherwise lost. The only data not recovered were large temporary files that were not important. You can check out HDD Regenrator here:

http://www.gold-software.com/download7605.html

Answer 4

Do you have rescue disk from your provider??

Is your PC on warranty period?

Call your help line if your pc is from a well know company

For last option:
check someone who can give you a simple clon of your hard disk by the Ghost Software, I don't nknow where you can find someone honest but transfering the Ghost software to another pc or laptop would be the best options al your data.

Good luck!!!

Answer 5

I had the same problem.

Purchased a new disk drive and rebuilt my system. Put the old disk drive in as a second drive.

Then used easy recover lite to read the bad disk.

I recovered every one of my files. It worked great

Answer 6

u said your pc detects no drives in machine... thats worst thing, co'z your hard disk is totally wrecked, it means you cant recover any files on it, even by using recovery tools.... you cant make it as slave also....

try this one:
try to take out your hard disk and then reconnect it, plug it properly....

then start your computer, look if it finds your hard disk...

if it is located then your lucky, you can still retrieve your files,,
you do master-slave config as what snvffy said.....

if not, take your hard disk out and try it to another computer, maybe your IDE cable or your power supply is at fault..

Answer 7

First be clear your operating system is crashed or your hard disk is crashed. In case your operating system get crashed, connect the hard disk as slave to any other computer and boot from its own hard disk. After operating system boots u can see the partitions of your hard disk. Copy necessary files and burn on cd or dvd or copy it to other partition (not in your hard disk partition).

In case hard disk is not detecting, we can not recover any single file from your old dead hard disk.

To install new hard disk costs approx $54. for 40GB sea gate hard disk.

Answer 8

Hi... just buy this hardware...

http://www.anywareus.com/products/cables/skide2usb.html

it will permit you to "plug" your IDE hard drive into any other computer which has USB!

I've done it a lot of times!

Hope had helped!

Carpe Diem

visit also: http://www.3gplaza.com/estore/control/Computer3G/productdetails?id=53981

Answer 9

i can help u but i need more info like the os u r using and the system that it is on if u can get this to me asap i can help u get it all back...PLEASE READ THIS....IF U STILL NEED HELP...

Answer 10

GEEK SQUAD