Getting data off a dying hard drive which has been removed from computer?

Question

Does anyone have any opinions on the best way to do this? Sending it to Best buy and spending $500 isn't an option!

Answer 1

I would get an external case for it. They start around $15. You can pull the info off of it and you can also use it as an external hard drive.

You just need to find the right external enclosure for your hard drive type. Is it SATA or PATA/IDE? You will also want to pay attention to how you want to connect it to your system. USB, Firewire, etc. USB is generally the easiest and most common. I know what others will say, that there is an external dongle that will attach to the hard drive and you won't need an external enclosure. But they are expensive for what you get, and then you may subject the hard drive to static electricity. (A definate no-no!)

However, rather than doing all this, you can just install the hard drive into your second slot and just transfer everything to the hard drive now in the primary slot of your PC. Norton Ghost is the only program out there that will transfer the Windows Operating System. If you have your Windows disks, then feel free to transfer everything manually.

Now, I am assuming that it is "dying" and not "dead." If it is dead, you will need a mount for your hard drive (external enclosure) and a data recovery program. Never used one, but I've found some links to some info for you.

Answer 2

Try the following first
Start windows at Safe Mode to eliminate any virus or faulty program from taking over the Hard Disk.

Press start button > Run > CMD and hit enter
type the following
chkdsk e: /f
and see the results

if it's OK then you just have a virus or bad program that need to be removed.

Otherwise there are some Website that offer Free maintenance program that can be helpful to you like:

http://hddguru.com


Regards,
:)

Answer 3

Attaching it as a slave or external drive as suggested will work if it's still possible to read from it, but if you are having read errors or other problems my suggestion would be to buy a copy of SpinRite ($89 from www.grc.com) which will do a very good job of recovering any sectors with read errors.

Note though - even if SpinRite manages to make it apparently run perfectly again (and it usually does), I'd recommend replacing it as once a disk starts to fail it should no longer be considered reliable.