Retrieving pictures from old hard drive

[Sean W]

Hello,
My moms computer recently had a problem with a update or somthing she says and wouldnt let her boot her computer anymore, she said somthing about it splitting the harddrive up or somthing, its hard for her to explain what happened because shes doesnt know much about computers,she went and bought a new hard drive and just reisntalled windows vista back on it and its up and running but she had a bunch of pictures and videos that of course were not backed up, im trying to get them off the old hard drive with my computer, ive installed the hard drive in my computer, both of them are sata hard drives but hers is not being detetcted anywhere, bios, windows ect.. now its my understanding that you dont have to set primary/slave jumpers with sata drives is that correct? Im running windows 7, I will be glad to supply any more info that is needed, I know a few things about computers but I wouldnt call my self a wiz of any kind, so if you need any more info please ask and possibly tell me how to find the info for you
Thanks in Advance
Sean

 

[Wamphryi]

Now that you have the second HD installed click Start then right Click on Computer then click Manage. Then select Disk Management and Initialize the Drive in question when it comes up. It should ask to initialize the drive automatically. If not scroll through the drives available and see if the disk is there. If disk managment cant see it then the problem is the HDD being seen at a BIOS level. However just because you cant see it in BIOS does not mean that it is not there so try Disk Management first. Im reasonably confident you will find it in Disk Management. If it asks to Format the Drive then dont. You will lose the data. If it does ask to format it may have a Partition issue that needs to be repaired.

 

[Sean W]

Thanks for the Quick response Wamphryi!
I did as you said and only my original hard drive letter C is in there with system reserve underneath that, below those in a seperate box its shows my original hard drive again and my dvd, but no other hard drives, In the bios it isnt showing up there either, in all the other sata spots except my hard drive it says undetected, she was saying somthing happened and it split her hard drive up, if it caused another partition to be made could that screw things up, like I said she is very vague when it comes to what happened or what she did to try and fix it cause she doesnt know alot about this stuff.

 

[Wamphryi]

It could be that the HDD is damaged. Yet it should still show up even if it is damaged unless the HDD BIOS itself is toast. Even if the Partition tables have been damaged the HDD should still be presenting itself at a BIOS level to Win 7. I would now suspect that the problem is a Firmware or BIOS issue in the drive. Look up on Google and see if the Brand of Drive has a particular problem. For instance Seagate had a problem with Firmware on a batch of drives they made specifically for Dell around this time last year. You may be best advised to take the drive to a Tech shop and have it tested. Also dont forget to teach your mother the value of a descent backup regime.

 

[Guest]

You may google the net to search restore solutions and there will be a batch of tools available and just download some to restore files.

When hard disk is physically damaged, no tool is able to help. But when it was logically damaged like mbr damaged or boot sector damaged, there is hope to restore files.

The recovery expert would tell you never got your disk accept new files before the recovery since anything to the drive except some read only tool would let you lose your files forever.

Three months ago, my memory sd card has some errors and i did tested some tools. I would recommend http://www.icare-recovery.com since it got my photos back.

Upon some recovery tools, my advice is download free trial before register.

Good luck.