Recovering data after a crash

[Trebor37212]

My Pavillion 23 All in One computer crashed  after I bought a HP printer and  installed HP Support Assistant - it crashed within a day, so I suspect that it may have something to do with a Windows Update conflict?  The computer is 5 years old

It won't start up normally. I used Recovery Manager to back up the photos, movies, and email, but it won't back up the data. I've tried both with an external hard drive and a DVD, but it starts the process and then halts saying (1) the hard drive doesn’t have enough space (which isn’t true) (2) the system partition doesn’t have enough space, etc.  I'm wondering what the next option for recovering the data should be before I give up and restore the system.

I also removed the hard drive and tried to download it to another external hard drive (SATA connection), but it wasn’t recognized when I connected it.

Advice?

[WAWood]

@Trebor37212 

The drive most likely was not recognized because the partition table became corrupted -- which would prevent another Windows PC from "seeing" the drive. 

But, there are ways around this issue.

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/