How to save a harddrives life

[ShinRa]

i dont care about the harddrive itself, but i want to recover the files on it. the harddrive is shot. whenever i try to reformat it it wont let me, and when i get to the desktop it restarts my comp over and over again. i dont care about fixing the drive, but is it still possible to recover the data on it? all the data is still there, i just cant access it.

 

[giant384]

just buy anothor hard drive and plug both hard drives into your computer and extract the date from the old one to your new one, but the data could be corrupted.

 

[Link]

If you are trying to save data on it, why on earth are you trying to format it? That wipes it clean.

 

[gweedodogg69]

You could get a new drive and try to copy the data or try putting the drive into the freezer for 30ish minutes. I read that putting a drive in a freezer can give the drive one last push to obtain the data. But I'd try the first thing first.

 

[The Brick]

Is windows installed on the disk? If so, you can use another drive to install windows on, and then connect your drive as a slave and copy the data.

 

[Reaktor4]

If you are trying to save data on it, why on earth are you trying to format it? That wipes it clean.

Formatting doesnt overwrite your data.
As for paying people for data recovery, waste of money usually. There is software that can fix 'broken' drives like mhdd, spinrite or disk doctor.

 

[giant384]

Formatting doesnt overwrite your data.
As for paying people for data recovery, waste of money usually. There is software that can fix 'broken' drives like mhdd, spinrite or disk doctor.

its true since some of it will be hidden deep within your drive.

 

[ShinRa]

that slave drive idea worked! thanks! i was able to recover files i hadnt seen since it stopped working like 2 years ago. thanks guys!:bounce:

 

[gweedodogg69]

Recovered all the pr0n. jk

 

[Raziaar]

Recovered all the pr0n. jk

Worth more than gold my friend, worth more than gold.

 

[Asus]

i dont care about the harddrive itself, but i want to recover the files on it. the harddrive is shot. whenever i try to reformat it it wont let me, and when i get to the desktop it restarts my comp over and over again. i dont care about fixing the drive, but is it still possible to recover the data on it? all the data is still there, i just cant access it.

As long as the restart over and over is from corrupt windows files and not a hardware issue then I'd think you could recover the data. Like others have said, use a different drive to boot to with windows with the bad drive installed as a 2nd. It won't be booting to the bad drive so it shouldn't have the restart issue. It would see the data perfectly fine unless the partition is messed up. Recover software might do the job then.

Normal formating does nothing to erase data but just makes the PC forget about it. That's why as long as you don't write more files to the drive you can recover data with a recovery program. Zero fill formating will erase data (write over with 0's).