Hard drive failing, best way to recover data?

[rutro12]

  I inherited my brothers Media Center after he passed away. It set for several years before I got to where I could start it up. When I did it went to check disk. After that it finaly booted up but locked up before I could do much. I checked the drive and it is a Seagate ST3500620AS. I ran Sea Tools and it failed with a test code; A6E9D068. I have a new drive for it and want to get it going again but I also want to recover as much of his data as possible. He was an avid photographer. All his pics are on this drive as well as his music. I explored the drive with UBCD so I know the factory image is on the drive but I don't know just which way to go about this, or what to do first.... can anyone point the way? Thanks in advance...

[WAWood]

@rutro12

Hello;

Allow me to welcome you to the HP forums!

If the "factory image" is the Recovery image that HP put there, that will do you no good on this drive -- as all it is used for is doing a complete factory reset of the PC, which erases the entire content of the drive in the process.

Your best bet for recovering data now is to do the following:
1) Remove the hard drive from the PC
2) Purchase a USB-to-Hard Driver adapter kit (like the one illustrated below)



3) Connect the old drive to the working PC
4) 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/

[rutro12]

 That's what I needed to know. Thanks so much for the reply WAWood. I thought of one more thing that was bothering me and that is the 64 bit Vista. Do I need a 64 bit system to save the files to? I built Windows systems for years but all 32 bit. I quit messing with that after XP and have not done much since. The 64 bit stuff was a new thing that I still don't completly understand other than it moves data in larger chunks and there fore faster. Thanks again WAWood.

[mdklassen]

Responding on behalf of WAWOOD, who deserves the "kudos" for his good response:

> Do I need a 64 bit system to save the files to?

No. Each file is a stored arrangement of thousands/millions of 1-bit values.

> The 64 bit stuff was a new thing that I still don't completely understand ...

Nor do I.  But, to use more than 4 GBytes of RAM on a computer, you need a 64-bit processor,

because 32-bits only lets you access the first 4GBytes of the RAM -- an addressing-range from 0 to up to ((2**32)-1) bytes.

There are certain design-constraints of 32-bit Windows that limit it to using the first 3.2 GB.

The 64-bit Windows has removed that constraint.

[rutro12]

  Hey thanks mdklassen. Now that helps my old dyslexic mind get around the 64bit thing.

 I've been doing some reading and it seems that the usb adapter has been problematic for some users. I started thinking about just mounting the drive that's failing in my PC which is a multi-boot machine. Then I could boot into my main windows 7 drive and use the recovery software from there. Is there any forseeable problem with that? I have a spare sata input on the mobo. If that is a workable solution could I also save the HP recovery image and use that to put the new drive I have in the Media Center and bring it back to factory spec? Or would it be better to go ahead and upgrade it to Windows 7 upgrade?

 I just want to get it back to a working condition for now. Thanks again for all the replys and great info.

[mdklassen]

>   I've been doing some reading and it seems that the usb adapter has been problematic for some users.

I am [not] from Missouri, but please "show me" one of those reports. 

All the IDE-to-USB and SATA-to-USB adapters that I have used have worked correctly for years.

> I started thinking about just mounting the drive that's failing in my PC which is a multi-boot machine.

> Then I could boot into my main windows 7 drive and use the recovery software from there. 

That would work, as long as you don't try to "boot" from this "secondary" disk-drive.

> Is there any forseeable problem with that?

Even though the old disk-drive might not be "bootable" in the old computer, the disk-drive's "file-system" might still be intact.  So, you can just use "File Explorer" to browse the 'C:\Users' folder, and to find the account-name that was used as the "primary" login to that computer.  Windows will prompt you to "take ownership" of that folder.  Allow it.

> Could I also save the HP recovery image and use that to put the new drive I have in the Media Center and bring it back to factory spec?

Is either the "old" disk-drive or the brand-new replacement disk-drive manufactured by either SEAGATE or WESTERN DIGITAL?  Or, is the "current" disk-drive on your computer manufacturered by either company.

If so, then there is free "disk-cloning" software on the respective manufacturer's web-site.

Download and install that software on your working computer.

The program has an option to create a "bootable" image (either onto a CD-recordable or onto a USB memory-stick).

Create that image.

On the "old" computer, connect the "old" disk-drive and the "brand-new" disk-drive.

Boot from that image that you just created.

If you are running the SEAGATE software, one of the connected disk-drives must be a SEAGATE drive.

TRICK: note that neither the "source" nor the "target" disk-drive needs to manufactured by SEAGATE -- as long as a SEAGATE disk-drive is detected, the disk-cloning will proceed.

Ditto the "trick", when using the WESTERN DIGITAL version of the disk-cloning software.

Use this disk-cloning software to copy all the partitions, including the "recovery" partition, onto the new disk-drive.

If you get any "disk-errors" when copying, just click 'skip', unless you are copying from the "recovery" partition.

If you are copying from the partition containing the 'C:' drive-letter, don't worry -- in the next step, below, you will be totally "wiping" the contents of that 'C:' partition.

Shutdown.

Disconnect the "old" disk-drive.

Boot from the new disk-drive, and choose to run that "recovery" to reload the original factory-installed Windows onto the new disk-drive into that 'C:' drive-letter.