Restore My Files : Information & Data Recovery

Here’s the original question.

"How to recover data? / logical hard drive failure on previous PC?

My old PC had a virus slip by the free AVG antivirus protection program. The PC started acting extremelly odd with web pages opening all on there own, programs and windows becoming un-responsive. Even the task manager started denying my access as though I was no longer the system administrator. In my attempts to correct the issue I wound up wanting to try re-installing the operating system in an overlay install. Because of updates having been installed, when I went to install from my OS cd it would not let me indicating my current operating system was newer. I mistakenly thought I’d just remove the updates and then go from there. Once I did that it was an obvious wrong move and now the PC wouldn’t even boot up properly. Now, when I tried to run the OS install cd it was not going to offer an overlay install option. It wanted to start clean and erase all the old data. I did not have anything business related of huge importance, but I did have some pictures of sentimental value so I did not choose to proceed any further at that time.

My PC was fairly old and quite slow so to immediately solve the issue and allow me to continue some internet business I had been in the middle of at the time, I actually just went out and bought a new desktop. I had been overdue on buying a new one so no biggie there, and I’m extremelly happy with the upgrade to the new desktop I chose.

From looking into the hard drive issue it appears if I’m understanding correctly, and from communication with a local data dr location, that I’m dealing with a logical hard drive failure due to a possible worm virus and then my negative impact as well.

Is there a reasonably priced recovery software I could try???? Or could I perhaps take the hard drive out of my old desktop and plug it in as a second one on my new desktop and recover the data that way???? Ofcourse avoiding the virus jumping to my new hard drive. My new desktop has up to date Norton Internet Security 2008.

Any advice / help / input would really be appreciated. I’d love to be able to retrieve all my old pictures, and if possible I’m wondering if I could retrieve webpages I had saved to my IE favorites. I had not dealt with any issues with that computer in a long long time so now that I think of it there was also a ton of personally important research oriented info in there.

The hard drive I’d like to do a recovery from had Windows XP Home, and my newer desk top has Vista.

Thanks so much for any help, or pointing me in the right direction.

Laurence"

Here was the first answer that I didn’t quite follow, and I never did see clarification on it. Though it sounds like the easiest solution I should pursue.

Quote from jethrohoyt

"I really doubt that this is as big a problem as your advisers make out.

If you have bought a new PC and the old one was ‘an old one’, then you will have SATA drives on new PC and IDE drives on old PC. This shouldn’t stop you as you might have an IDE slot on new PC MoBo, but complications may ensue.

For $15 to $25 there is a better way.

Buy a IDE to USB (or even a SATA or IDE to USB) adapter. These are simple to use, just make sure IDE drive is master, plug in new device to IDE socket on HDD first (indicator towards power socket) then plug in power from wall power supply provided into IDE drive (in the $25), then plug USB from device into new PC and browse the old drive. The old drive comes up just like a USB external HDD (which it now is) in Windows Explorer and you drag and drop the files you want.

Clean it up with Norton and your old PC can then be salvaged.

I can see no pitfalls – I do this as a kind of second job. Its straightforward and it is regardless of the state of the MBR of the old drive.

Good luck

Source(s):
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/…
"

Here was my reply that never was replied back to.

"Additional Details

Thanks very much for the prompt reply, and help.

The old PC is a 4 year old Dell Dimension 4600.

OK, I’m halfway following you, but not 100%.

Off the top of my head I don’t know how to ID an IDE plug/slot or a SATA. So, I’ll have to do a Google search there so I know what we are talking about. Then, I’ll pop the cover off the Dell to see what I have there.

So, the I’m not following you here. Am I going to physically remove the hard drive from the old PC, and then hopefully have an extra plug on the ribbon cable that is on the new PC’s HDD that I can also then jump over to the HDD from the old PC. Then, hopefully also have an extra unused plug from the power supply and plug that into the old PC’s HDD to power it up. Then, isn’t there a little jumper plug that has to be moved on the old HDD to make it a slave and not think it’s the master????

More I think about it, I guess I’m not following you. As the above is what I was invisioning."

Anybody cap
OK, thanks much guys. Really appreciate the info/help.

Possibly the easiest answer would be to get a USB to IDE/SATA cable, or a USB hard drive caddy. Either option will be cheap, you’ll find tons of them on eBay, and many good computer shops will sell them too. That way you can plug the drive into a spare USB port, rather than opening your computer. The cable is probably the best option – they usually have connections for 2.5" laptop drives, 3.5" desktop drives and SATA drives.

IDE connectors have 40 pins in 2 rows of 20, while SATA is small, black, L-shaped and easily broken!

If the data was deleted off the drive, then you can download software to "undelete" files. If the drive cannot be read at all, then a data recovery company would probably charge around £600. Costs in other currencies will vary.