Re: recovering files after crash

paulmpianist wrote:

paulm218@xxxxxxx direct e-mail copy would be great too..


About half a year ago I had a HP pavillion a350n crash so that it wouldn't boot up. It would try to boot up and get as far as the blue Windows XP screen it offered the F10 and F1 options to get into setup and into recover but that was all.
I took the hard drive out and bought an external hard drive enclosure box. I put a new hard drive in the HP computer and then installed Windows. everything is fine there. However when i put hte old hard drive in the external box and tried to look into it to copy the "My Documents" files and "Shared Documents" files... no luck.
I can't get the HP to recognize that it has a USB storage device. Or if it does it sometimes says "The USB device is a high speed USB storage device plugged into a non high speed connection. It will run at reduced speed." (this is in my other HP pavillion with WinXP too. )

but then the drive doesn't show up at all. When I take the brand new Hard drive
out of the A350n and put it in the external Hard drive box, it shows up fine and i can access all the files.

what can i do to get into the Documents of the original 160 gig hard drive that won't show up in the "My Computer" section?


To sum up... the external hard drive case shows up when the new hard drive is in it. When i put the old hard drive in it which has the files i want the drive won't show up. ... (Windows won't run on the old one because i rendered a video and that crashed it. I did this a half a year ago and just erased everything and started over. but i want the videos i made on this one. I have a lot of music i recorded and composed on this one too.)

thanks for any help.

i could take it to micro center or CompUsa and they could get it but i thought this external hard drive case would do it.


paulm218@xxxxxxx

Try installing the drive as a second drive in either the system you have or another XP or Win2k system as a slave drive and see if the drive is detected by the BIOS, and readable in windows. If it's readable see this article for taking ownership of files and folders.

HOW TO: Take Ownership of a File or Folder in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=308421

If it's not detected by the BIOS or readable in windows the next step is to contact a drive date recovery service such as www.ontrack.com or www.drivesavers.com. They are very expensive though.

Next time have a full and complete backup of all data.

--
Rock
MS MVP Windows - Shell/User

.

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