Need to recover files before reinstalling Win 7

[faromic]

Hey all,
Somethings happened with my windows 7 install on my laptop. I can't get into Windows. Out of nowhere on Friday when I restarted the computer it wouldn't restart. It takes forever and freezes on install. I've tried to repair to no avail. Now it won't even boot, I get an I/O error and want to just reinstall. However, I have a lot of file on the computer I need to recover. I remember when I installed Vista a while back a folder called windows.old was created. I have a lot of files on my c: drive where windows is installed in addition to the my documents, music, etc.
If I reinstall win 7 will these files still be there? I know with XP it formatted everytime....I know in the win7 menu there is an option to format or just install.
thanks

 

[edmond419]

I/O error? Disk read error? The hard drive is finished (End of usage life...did you bump it much)

See if you can take the hard drive out and put it into another computer to take out the files.

If you don't tell Windows 7 to format the drive, files will be there. Read each passage carefully to make sure you won't format the drive by accident. When I installed Win 7 my files stayed there

 

[faromic]

Yup...It was a laptop hard drive...the freakin laptop was only 5 months old...I turned the computer off Friday no problem....tried booting on Sat....no go. So after I posted today I did just that; I took the hard drive out and put it in my slam drive connected to my desktop to try and recover the files. At first it was recognized, then poof, I\O errors and drive wasn't recognized. I tried getdataback to get the data off the drive but also got I\O errors. So not sure what to do now. I'm going to call HP to start and have them send me a replacement. I hadn't backed up the comp in about 2 weeks so I had some stuff I need on there so I'd like to get the files back.

 

[faromic]

Has anyone had experience with Stellar Phoenix data recovery software...I'm debating on this..not sure if it will work because of my corrupted drive and I\O errors.

http://www.stellarinfo.com/

 

[w33dg0d]

Try running a scanstate.exe loadstate.exe to grab your files from hard drive.

 

[faromic]

I did a google search on those two and it seems like I have to download them? Or are they natively in windows? could i just type "scanstate.exe" from the cmd prompt?

 

[faromic]

Here's an update....I used Stellar Phoenix Recovery software and managed to get all my files off the drive! I highly recommend this software...I tried getdataback and I received I/O errors during an attempt to recover.

 

[Irvine]

Well, since you just want to get the data back, you can take the hard drive out and connect it to another computer which can boot regularly and then use easus data recovery wizard to try getting data back; or you can create winpe bootable disk to use data recovery software to help you try to get files back.
Here are two articles for you, and maybe they can give you new ideas or can help you out.
http://www.easeus.com/datarecoverywizard/faq/technical-faq00.htm
http://www.easeus.com/partition-recovery/winpe-for-partition-recovery.htm
Hope this can help you!

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