Pretty Tricky Stuff

[Guest]

Good Afternoon,

I'd like to take the time to thank tomshardware.com for all the advice I've received over the time. I've never posted a question of my own, but I surely did appreciate learning from all the threads here. I am a computer noob. I've been teaching myself Adobe and Autodesk software, I just bought a new desktop, and I'm trying to learn how to build one of my own. I know I'll probably sound stupid, but I hope I can get some education here.

With that being said, I have an HDD I would like to use or recover in any way I can. Here's the situation:



It was the internal HDD for a Sony Vaio FW Series laptop. It was the only HDD and therefore was the "master?" HDD. On the computer was 64 bit Vista. It is a 2.5" Hitachi 320gb 7200rpm SATA . I was frustrated with an ex girlfriend and punched the laptop, breaking it. Afterwards, I removed the HDD and installed it on my desktop, it spun up fine and entered Windows recovery mode.

This Link is for the stats on the Sony Vaio laptop.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834117938

What I would like to do is extract the data i.e. music, pictures, video, etc. from the HDD in the least expensive way possible.

I've been considering installing the HDD in my desktop but to do that I believe I'd need the recovery disc and I'd need to install Vista into my new desktop. I do have the recovery disc but I've been apprehensive about installing it. Once I have everything I want from the HDD I want to reinstall Windows 7 onto my desktop from the original HDD, and I want to be sure I wont mess up the desktop in the process.

This link is for the stats on the ZT Systems desktop.

http://www.sears.com/zt-affinity-new-amd-a6-3650-apu-desktop-pc/p-00325351000P




So at the end of the day, I'd like to remove the HDD containing Windows 7 from my desktop and install and recover Windows Vista with my old HDD. Then reverse the process, and not break my computer in the process.



FYI I also have the drivers on the CD that came with the mobo.

Sorry if this post is in the wrong section.

Can I do this? If so, is there anything I would need to know?

 

[JDFan]

No need to change your desktop system to VISTA -- what you want to do is install the laptop HDD into your desktop as a second HDD not the boot HDD (you want to still boot from your desktop HDD -- If it lists both OSes just select Win7 to boot from) -- once your desktop boots into win7 go to my computer and it should list the laptop HDD - open it in explorer find the files you want to keep and copy them to your desktop HDD (or DVD - CD depending on how you want to keep them) -- shut down the system and remove the laptop HDD

EDIT : Forgot to mention it may not be that easy since you are talking about getting files from an old user account which tend to be set as hidden and not accessible to other users -- so you'll need to have your system set to show hidden and system files and-- then you'll first need to take ownership of the old users folder :

To resolve this issue, you must turn off Simple File Sharing, and then take ownership of the folder:

Turn off Simple File Sharing:
Click Start, and then click My Computer.
On the Tools menu, click Folder Options, and then click the View tab.
Under Advanced Settings, click to clear the Use simple file sharing (Recommended) check box, and then click OK.
Right-click the folder that you want to take ownership of, and then click Properties.
Click the Security tab, and then click OK on the Security message, if one appears.
Click Advanced, and then click the Owner tab.
In the Name list, click your user name, Administrator if you are logged in as Administrator, or click the Administrators group.

If you want to take ownership of the contents of that folder, click to select the Replace owner on subcontainers and objects check box.
Click OK.

You may receive the following error message, where Folder is the name of the folder that you want to take ownership of:
You do not have permission to read the contents of directory Folder. Do you want to replace the directory permissions with permissions granting you Full Control? All permissions will be replaced if you press Yes.
Click Yes.
Click OK, and then reapply the permissions and security settings that you want for the folder and the folder contents.

also once you copy them to the new location you may need to remove the Hidden and\or System attributes using the command prompt and navigating to the folder you place them in and using "attrib -H -S \*.* /S /D" without the "s -- this is a dos command to remove the hidden and system attributes from every file in that folder (including sub folders and directories) so you would copy all of the files you want to keep from the old HDD to a new folder on your desktop HDD (for example a folder named "c:\oldHDD") -- open a command prompt and type "CD oldHDD" (change directory - again without the "s) to get to the oldHDD folder and then enter "attrib -H -S \*.* /S /D" and hit enter (this will remove the hidden and system attributes from all of the folders you placed inside the oldHDD folder so you can then use them normally instead of them being hidden

 

[Guest]

Hi JD Fan. Thanks for the reply. I installed the HDD and booted up Win 7 but it doesnt show up in my computer or disc management.

On a side note, it shows up in the BIOS as an HDD connected to the SATA port, but doesnt list the option to boot from it either..

I figured this was due to some kind of driver problem.

Any help?