How do I recover data from a Vista HDD mounted to a Windows 7 PC?

MacGregor

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Jul 30, 2015
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An old Vista laptop is having hardware trouble and I want the data from the HDD. I have removed the drive and mounted it in a USB caddy and attached it to a Windows 7 recovery PC.

The drive does not mount, but can be seen in disk manager. It is black bordered (meaning it needs to be initialized and/or formatted) to be seen and that is exactly what I do not want as it will kill my data.

Is there a recommended 3rd party app that can read the Vista TxF formatting so I can move forward?
 
Solution
Hey there, MacGregor.

You could try accessing the drive via Linux Live DVD/USB, to see if it's properly recognized and if you can get to your data. If that doesn't help, you could try with data recovery software: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-1644496/lost-data-recovery.html. If worse comes to worst and you're unable to recover your data, then I'm afraid you'll have to go with a data recovery company.

Hope that helps.
Boogieman_WD
Hey there, MacGregor.

You could try accessing the drive via Linux Live DVD/USB, to see if it's properly recognized and if you can get to your data. If that doesn't help, you could try with data recovery software: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-1644496/lost-data-recovery.html. If worse comes to worst and you're unable to recover your data, then I'm afraid you'll have to go with a data recovery company.

Hope that helps.
Boogieman_WD
 
Solution