Attempting to Recover Hard Disk Data

[tom_bertin9-9]

Hi All,

  Hope you are well...

  So...  My Dad called me the other day...  He said he just shut off his machine one day and turned it back on and it now hangs after the Windows 4 paned logo...  I tried to boot from a bootable CD and that hung the machine after the POST.  I would normally completely wipe the hard disk at this point but my Dad says there are some Word files he needs back.  Does anyone have any ideas how to access files on this hard disk's file system?

  Here's the more technical specs. on the machine that I have been able to lookup:

* HP Pavilion p6823w Desktop PC, AMD Phenom II X2 521, 4 Gig. RAM, Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit); Service Pack 1 (HP Product # = "QN642AAR#ABA"
* Hard Disk is model "HDS721010CLA332"

  
  Thank you in advance.

Cheers,

TB

[WAWood]

@tom_bertin9-9 

The best way to recover data from the drive in your dad's PC is to remove it from his and connect to yours.

Then, try to retrieve the files and folders you want to save from the old drive and copy them to the new PC.

If this does not work, then you need to do the following:
1) Download and install this utility on a working PC http://www.majorgeeks.com/news/story/recover_data_in_3_steps_with_minitool_power_data_recovery_free_...
2) Run the data recovery utility to see what can be retrieved from the old drive.

If that tool does not find what you need, an alternative is Recuva http://www.piriform.com/recuva

And, if that does not work well, the best tool out there is this one, but only the trial version is free http://www.file-recovery.com/