So my desktop died. Not sure what happened to it but I am almost sure it’s the mother board. It’s a Dell studio. I am not real smart with computers. I know just enough to be dangerous. I wanted to save the data on the hard drive from the desktop so I went out and got a I/O Magic USB Hard Drive Enclosure to use with my laptop to try to recover my data. It seems there are 2 hard drives in the desktop. I put the 1st one in the enclosure and my laptop seen it but said there was nothing on it. I put the second one in and it sees it, gave it a drive of G but then said I need to format it. I am guessing this will wipe it clean and I will lose everything. What do I do next? HELP
What makes you think it's the mobo did you try running a live cd to be sure,in the mean time you could try installing minitool partition wizard & or minitool partition recovery & see if they can detect any used space or lost partitions,i'd also run linux perhaps zorin & see if it can find the lost data obviously at this stage you only want to read the drive not write to it,so for minitool partition wizard once installed execute it & see what the window shows (do nothing else)as for partition recovery again you only want to scan do not recover,i'd also consider placing the hdd into a computer rather than the usb device http://zorin-os.com/free.html
any partition or used space on drive in question if nothings there then install partition recovery & see if it can locate any lost partitions,you might want to try running disk check as well as the hdd manufacturers hdd check utility to see if it picks up corrupted sectors
My advice differs. Get a program called TestDisk http://www.cgsecurity.org/testdisk-6.13.win.zip Run it and do the following: 1. Just press enter here, on the 'CREATE' you see flashing. this takes you to the net screen.. 2. You now see it says 'Select a media (use Arrow keys, then press Enter):' so read carefully the names given for each of your hard drives and select the correct one for recovery!! Press Enter when you have chosen. 3. Now it asks you to choose the partition table type. In most cases this is simply the first choice. The software detects this for you if it can so read all of the text on this window now. so keep it at Intel (if this is correct) and hit Enter. 4. Now you have a choice of a few useful tools. In your case it may be best to choose 'Analyse' Then hit Enter on the next screen to go on to choose a partition. 5. Now you see in green, the partitions it found. Be careful not to choose delete here! I would advise you press P which leads you to the list of found files on that partition. Now you can go through the files and folders then select which ones to copy. I have recovered many many files with this tool... and partitions! Good luck
See if your drive is showing in BIOS or not. The best thing you can do to recover your data is to use Ubuntu Live CD. Download it from ubuntu.com and burn the USB using bootable USB creator programs. It'll allow you to navigate through targetted storage device and backup your data to an external hard drive. If all else fails, using file recovery utility could be the best way to recover data. There are bunch of free and paid recovery utilities are available but choosing one of them is full of hurdle. I'd advise to choose any one of the two mentioned below. Recuva -Free Stellar Phoenix File Recovery - PAID.
thanks for everybodys help but it ended up being to much for me and in a drunkin moment I hit FORMAT.....I feel much better now
Yeah sometimes you gotta bite the bullet & just except your going to lose data,on the upside it's a good time to start creating images with easeus todo backup (its free for personal use)also get another hdd to duplicate data you can't afford to lose
I once thought I had a corrupt hard drive and did a format then found out the cable was bad and lost everything.I didn't have a spare drive at the time to back up all of my important stuff.I guess you learn the hard way sometimes.
Simply formatting and loosing your data is not a single and most effective solution for problem like yours. You should better learn a way to pin point the cause so that you can freely recover data from the troubled situations. However, Its good to hear that you solved problem on your own but didn't mentioned about your data (weather its recovered or not). Rest OK.
YOU FOOOOOOOOOL! Hehe nah I've done the same in the past mate when it just frustrates you to that point. I kicked the tower once and the only result I got from that was... next day I found another hard drive totally corrupted! when I tried browsing the drive it was just a load of random named directories with symbols etc. as the names and none were accessible in windows. Eventually I had to learn to reconstruct partition table damage. The amazing this is...it took 4 weeks and I only lost 3 files after all that. The moral is, don't kick the PC, it is likely the problem will become a HUGE one afterwards Glad you sorted it anyway..sort of
