Unbootable Hard Drive "Bill" <ofcbill[ at ]yahoo.com> 12/29/2008 7:33:19 PM I fried my hard drive last week. Dell has already installed a replacement drive. My question is that the os will not recognize the old drive at all. Like an idiot I forgot to backup my files. Is there a workaround? The disk drive does not even show up in the recovery function.

Re: Unbootable Hard Drive "LVTravel" <none[ at ]nothere.com> 12/29/2008 7:54:55 PM "Bill" <ofcbill[ at ]yahoo.com> wrote in message news:85260347-DF8E-433D-84B4-C4936A5DB2FF[ at ]microsoft.com... [Quoted Text] > I fried my hard drive last week. Dell has already installed a replacement > drive. My question is that the os will not recognize the old drive at all. > Like an idiot I forgot to backup my files. Is there a workaround? The disk > drive does not even show up in the recovery function. This is what I got from your statement and question: You had a drive die and Dell replaced it with a working bootable hard drive. You still have the dead drive and you want to get the information off of it now that you have a working computer again. You can't get the bios or the computer to "see" the bad drive. If you tried to put the bad drive in as a second drive and have positioned the jumpers on the new and old drive properly (for IDE drives) and attempted to run the drive without success you are probably out of luck for a local recovery of the data. The only workaround for a "fried" drive generally is a costly data recovery service. By costly I believe most recovery companies charge between $200-300 per 10 GB drive at a minimum and can go up steeply from there and there still is no guarantee that the recovery service will obtain all the data. There is no replacement for a good data backup program even for home computer systems. As most say, it isn't "if" a hard drive will fail but "when."

Re: Unbootable Hard Drive "David B." <mail[ at ]nomail.net> 12/29/2008 7:56:16 PM Does BIOS see the drive? Is it spinning up?, Depending on how it failed you may be wasting your time. -- ---- Crosspost, do not multipost http://www.blakjak.demon.co.uk/mul_crss.htm How to ask a question http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555375 Help Us Help You http://dts-l.net/goodpost.htm "Bill" <ofcbill[ at ]yahoo.com> wrote in message news:85260347-DF8E-433D-84B4-C4936A5DB2FF[ at ]microsoft.com... [Quoted Text] >I fried my hard drive last week. Dell has already installed a replacement >drive. My question is that the os will not recognize the old drive at all. >Like an idiot I forgot to backup my files. Is there a workaround? The disk >drive does not even show up in the recovery function.

Re: Unbootable Hard Drive "R. C. White" <rc[ at ]grandecom.net> 12/29/2008 8:55:30 PM Hi, Bill. What is the make and model of your "dead" drive? Most HD vendors provide utilities to test their drives. Seagate, for examples, has SeaTools available on their website. Download it for free and see if it can tell you anything about your hard drive. If a Seagate drive fails the test within the warranty period (often 5 years), then Seagate will issue an RMA (Return Materials Authorization) that you can use to return the drive for warranty replacement. Of course, this might not apply in your case since Dell has already replaced the drive. But the test might give you clues to help you recover the drive contents. RC -- R. C. White, CPA San Marcos, TX rc[ at ]grandecom.net Microsoft Windows MVP (Running Windows Live Mail 2009 1202 in Win7 x64 6801) "Bill" <ofcbill[ at ]yahoo.com> wrote in message news:85260347-DF8E-433D-84B4-C4936A5DB2FF[ at ]microsoft.com... [Quoted Text] > I fried my hard drive last week. Dell has already installed a replacement > drive. My question is that the os will not recognize the old drive at all. > Like an idiot I forgot to backup my files. Is there a workaround? The disk > drive does not even show up in the recovery function.