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HP Recommended
Eliteone
Microsoft Windows 10 (64-bit)

My 4 year old Eliteone all-in-one just suddenly stopped.  When I attempt to start a slight gray , hardly noticeable flickers for millisecond.  That tells me 2 things; there is power to the computer and I need to buy a new one.

Personal health issues have distracted me and I've not backed up on an external hard drive for some time

I had not downloaded any new programs except, of course,  Microsoft and iTunes updates.

I would appreciate any advice/suggestion as to the highly unlikely ability to get it working again but especially some genius way of retrieving the info on the hard drive.

In summation...HELP

Thanks very much.

P

1 REPLY 1
HP Recommended

@Peebslc2 

The main problem with All-in-Ones is that they are basically huge laptops with external mice and keyboards -- and to get to anything, you have to take off the back, which can be really hard to do.  Underneath the back, you will probably find a drive "cage" and inside that, will be your hard drive.  You will need to remove that drive to be able to retrieve data from it.

 

All you will be able to recover at best from the drive is personal data. You will not be able to recover settings, website information (including user accounts and passwords) or applications.

Your best bet for recovering data now is to do the following:
1) Remove the disk drive from the old PC. If this is a SATA hard drive or a SATA SSD, this is a simple thing to do. If this is an m.2 SSD, that could be either screwed to the motherboard or soldered to the motherboard. If the second, you would need to have a techician remove it for you, or you risk seriously damaging the PC doing it yourself.
2) If you have a desktop PC with a spare hard drive connector, then connect the old drive to that. If the old drive is a SATA drive, connect both the power cable and the data cable. (This adapter is illustrated below) If the old drive is an m.2 SSD, you will need a USB-to-mSATA cable.
USB-Drive-Adapter.jpg
3) 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 demo version is free https://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-software.htm



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