Anyone really good with computer recovery?

[00bolt]

or know someone who is?

I have a laptop that was recently upgraded from Windows 7 to 10. i hardly ever use the laptop, but it stores alot of priceless photos and videos of the kids, etc. and i am an idiot and never backed them up. Was always one of those things "ill get around to"....

well recently the laptop did a windows update and restarted. when it restarted, it wouldnt boot up. Kept going to a screen with different options to try and fix it. I tried them all (except the one option that said it would erase everything)... but nothing worked. restore, blah blah...

so I ran it up to this little mom and pop computer repair store around the corner from my house. The owner guy barely spoke english. Told him I didnt care about the laptop at all, nor reinstalling windows, anything. i just basically wanted all my photos/videos that were in one folder in my c drive. said he understood and would do his best. called me back and said he couldnt do it. He says hard drive needs to be replaced. So I told him not to touch it and dont format hard drive or anything.

so thats where i am at. i am hoping and praying this guy just isnt good enough and didnt know some secret stuff someone else may know lol and that my hard drive isnt just shot. does anyone know someone who could possibly help? everything is saved into one folder in my C drive, so all i need is that one folder copied over to an external drive or something if possible.

[juiceweezl]

Take hard drive out of laptop. Buy a $15 enclosure and place hard drive in it. Plug enclosure into another computer via USB (it'll come with the cord) and then it will read like a flash drive. You can move the pictures off it if you want.

The only thing that would prevent you from doing that is if the drive is bad. Fry's will have enclosures. You'll need to take the drive out and take it with you though to make sure you get the right one. I'd guess it's a SATA drive, but take it to be sure.

[jw33]

I had a similar failure and I put the drive in the freezer for about an hour and I was able to get the drive running one last time long enough to transfer everything.

[00bolt]

Okay, thank you. so if i put in the enclosure and it cannot read it in order to transfer, there is absolutely nothing i can do (except maybe this freezer trick?)... theres no other tricks or something?

[Tx Redneck]

Where are you located? I can take a look at it for you. If I can get the pics, I'll copy to DVD(s), host them or copy to another hdd.

[00bolt]

i live in Mansfield, work in Las Colinas..... and everywhere in between!

[00bolt]

i have a 2 TB external USB drive i can copy it all to

[Tx Redneck]

I happen to be between jobs right now and can be mobile most any time. Would you like me to take a look at it?

[FunFordCobra]

come to Denver and make my av zones work homie

[ceyko]

So was the drive making any noise?

All my experiences with failed drives is you know they are going typically.

1. They make noise.
2. (What you see) is random data corruption.

With the 2nd one, typically throwing it in a external dock will allow you to recover most - if not ally our data. If completely hardware failure of the drive, that's when it becomes tough/impossible with basic knowledge.

I recommend one of these...

[ame]http://www.amazon.com/Aluratek-2-5-Inch-3-5-Inch-Enclosure-AHDDU100F/dp/B001BLWPUU/ref=sr_1_2?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1455633422&sr=1-2&keywords=aluratek[/ame]

...easy peasy to test the drive out with one of those and I've "recovered" many of drive with that for friends and family.

Edit: Point being if you heard nothing from the drive...etc, I'm thinking you're the 2nd one and should be able to get data off the drive. A lot of the PC repair places have less knowledge than your average user. (If that even)

[ram57ta]

Have you tried hitting it with a hammer?

[Craizie]

Have you tried hitting it with a hammer?

Going with the hard reset option. I like it.

[Tx Redneck]

This thing was hosed 8 ways to Sunday. After almost 10hrs trying to finagle it to be able to see the data to be recovered and having had no luck with TestDisc or PhotoRec(they almost ALWAYS work after correcting partition problems), I used a utility that scanned the drive bit by bit and was able recover his pics.

In Linux, the drive volume was properly reported but no partition data, Win would show 3 different partitions of varying types and a large unallocated volume that you couldn't do anything with. AND, I managed to hose(see dumbass) my own freakin OS drive in the process of working with his from a boot disc.

[ram57ta]

This thing was hosed 8 ways to Sunday. After almost 10hrs trying to finagle it to be able to see the data to be recovered and having had no luck with TestDisc or PhotoRec(they almost ALWAYS work after correcting partition problems), I used a utility that scanned the drive bit by bit and was able recover his pics.

In Linux, the drive volume was properly reported but no partition data, Win would show 3 different partitions of varying types and a large unallocated volume that you couldn't do anything with. AND, I managed to hose(see dumbass) my own freakin OS drive in the process of working with his from a boot disc.

Hitting it with a hammer would have been easier and quicker..and would have resulted in a VERY GOOD LESSON to not store important data/files on the OS primary hard drive. I've tried to explain this countless times to several people...and even AFTER they have lost everything and I put in a new HDD and reinstall.....they STILL DO THE SAME STUPID SHIT. Some people just refuse to learn.

[Tx Redneck]

Yeah, I invested in CrashPlan a couple years ago and it's already proven to be a life saver from this very incident. I thought I had my user profile folder on one of the 4 hdd's in my pc, but found out after hosing mine that it was still on the ssd. Thankfully it was backed up by CrashPlan and I was able to dl the important data(crucial to my divorce).