Multiple Hard-drives and Data Retrieval

grimwood26 · Oct 18, 2016

I have been working on a friend's work computer for the past few weeks to try and get it to work. It is a rather old desktop PC running XP. We've finally come to the conclusion that the hard drive is finally starting to go and that a replacement (New Drive or Entire PC) is in order . Unfortunately he has not done any sort of backing up before and I have to see what I can get off of it.

I have one last idea I want to try before I send him to someone better equipped: The problem (right now) is that it cannot boot up XP. If I put it in as a secondary drive in a PC that has a hard drive with a functioning with XP, is there a chance I could bypass the booting problem and get at least some of the data from it?

JaredDM · Oct 18, 2016

Yes, that would certainly be the first thing I'd try before anything else. There are all sorts of reasons why a computer will fail to boot that might not be related to the hard drive at all. Could just be some logical corruption.

Ironsounds · Oct 18, 2016

Hello... You should be able to put the drive into any Modern Windows OS as a secondary Drive... because the files will be in NTFS format... Give permission to use the drive as administrator in the OS. Or any Low cost SATA/IDE adaptor to USB connection or an USB EXT enclosure is another method I use to retrieve XP created DATA.

BadAsAl · Oct 18, 2016

Keep in mind any PC you put it in has to have the correct connection, SATA or IDE. Also, some PC's won't have an extra port to plug the drive into regardless. So Ironsounds advice is the way I would go, get a USB adapter/enclosure, put the old drive in it and plug it into any working computer and it should read the drive provided it isn't completely dead.

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Multiple Hard-drives and Data Retrieval

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