Windows 7 cannot read hard drive from dead Vista PC

[kmag27]

Hello,
My Dell Windows Vista PC died. I am attempting to recover the data on the hard drive. I have connected the hard drive to a laptop running Windows 7 using a sata to usb adapter. The laptop sees the hard drive and has assigned it a drive letter, but when I try to read the file it says the drive needs to be formatted.

 

[inzone]

Was the Vista OS a 32 bit or 64 bit ? What is the laptop 32 bit or 64 bit ? Was the drive ib the other pc connected to a sata port the was in IDE mode and the laptop is in AHCI mode ?

 

[nukemaster]

Check disk management(diskmgmt.msc) to see if any other partitions are on the drive.

Maybe the drive is the reason for the problem.

You may want to try something like this. I have not used it, but have used other easeUS software and it all worked quite good.

http://www.easeus.com/partition-recovery/

I have personally never had issues moving drives from system to system from 32-bit->64-bit and 64-bit->32-bit bit as well as IDE mode -> AHCI mode. I do not think that should make a difference. Inzone, Have you run into this in the past?

My first though before seeing it wanted to format was a permissions issue, but you need to at least see the partition to deal with that.

If you by any chance have another system to test it on(preferably a desktop so you can skip the adapter), it may be worth a shot.

 

[kmag27]

Was the Vista OS a 32 bit or 64 bit ? What is the laptop 32 bit or 64 bit ? Was the drive ib the other pc connected to a sata port the was in IDE mode and the laptop is in AHCI mode ?

Thanks for the response.

The laptop is 32 bit and ide

The pc was 64 bit and achi

 

[kmag27]

In my experience, the formatting question often pops out for different reasons. But the only way to regain your inaccessible files inside the drive is to recover your data at the aid of a third party recovery tool.
You may try a recovery freeware, which had helped me restoring my inaccessible data from unformatted drive many times. You will know it after applying it.
Note for you:
1. If you want to get all your files back, you should never write anything new to this drive in case of overwriting the originate data, which can be a nightmare of your files data.
2. If you want to avoid recovery failure, you are supposed to save your recovered data on a different drive
3. You should back up your data as possible as you can in the future.

Thanks for your response. I dont think the drive is unformatted, but I will give it a shot tomw.

And yes, kicking myself for not backing up more frequently! Lost about 4 weeks.

 

[kmag27]

Check disk management(diskmgmt.msc) to see if any other partitions are on the drive.

Maybe the drive is the reason for the problem.

You may want to try something like this. I have not used it, but have used other easeUS software and it all worked quite good.

http://www.easeus.com/partition-recovery/

I have personally never had issues moving drives from system to system from 32-bit->64-bit and 64-bit->32-bit bit as well as IDE mode -> AHCI mode. I do not think that should make a difference. Inzone, Have you run into this in the past?

My first though before seeing it wanted to format was a permissions issue, but you need to at least see the partition to deal with that.

If you by any chance have another system to test it on(preferably a desktop so you can skip the adapter), it may be worth a shot.

The partition appears but looks 100% free.... No data.

 

[nukemaster]

that is not good at all.