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Geek Culture / Help with a laptop hard drive

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Yodaman Jer
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Posted: 3rd Jun 2012 17:18 Edited at: 3rd Jun 2012 17:19
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Hey guys,

My mom's laptop went completely KABLAM! and decided to blow the graphics processor to kingdom come with a heat-blast. I had a friend look at it to determine if it was worth replacing the parts and he said no. The price for the part would've been almost as much as getting a new (and better) laptop.

Assuming that I knew what I was doing, I went and bought a 2.5" external case unit for the drive and plugged it into my computer to try and save her data. The problem? Only the recovery and boot tools partitions would show up on her drive, and the "C:" portion never was visible. Is there anyway I can get to it from my computer, or do I have to send it in?

Normally I know the answer to this stuff but this just confuses me.

EDIT: Accidentally clicked submit!

Do I essentially have to boot into the drive somehow?

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Slow Programmer
19
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Joined: 5th Apr 2006
Location: USA, Tennessee
Posted: 3rd Jun 2012 18:02 Edited at: 3rd Jun 2012 18:08
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What is the OS on the drive? I recently had to transfer some files from a laptop drive that was running XP with my Win 7 machine. It was aggravating. I was probably doing it wrong, but I found I had to change permissions on the laptop drive to get to the contents. If I remember right windows 7 gave that as option when trying to read the drive. It then took about 30 minutes to make the drive readable. I probably have not helped, but check and see if it is a permission issue.

http://www.ehow.com/how_5040977_change-permission-crashed-hard-drive.html

There are two kinds of computer users. Those that use Macs and those that wish they did.
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Yodaman Jer
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Posted: 3rd Jun 2012 19:55
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Both OSs are Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit. The drive from the laptop was used in an HP with an AMD Processor and graphics chip, and the computer I plugged it into was Intel based. Could that have anything to do with it?

I'll look into resetting permissions, but wouldn't that have blocked all folders and not just the C:\ partition?

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nonZero
13
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Joined: 10th Jul 2011
Location: Dark Empire HQ, Otherworld, Silent Hill
Posted: 3rd Jun 2012 21:01
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Quote: "The drive from the laptop was used in an HP with an AMD Processor and graphics chip, and the computer I plugged it into was Intel based."

The CPUs, GPUs have nothing to do with the hard drive so you don't have to worry there. Now, about the data recovery...

Have you tried connecting it to a machine running Ubuntu Linux? That's what I do for all my maintenance, recovery or ...*cough*... nothing, meow. But on a serious note, it may help. Linux isn't limited the way windows is with file-systems and hidden folders/paritions. In fact my OEM's hidden partition is readable in Linux and bootable in GRUB but Windows shows it as an unknown file system, lol.

That aside, you can always look for recovery software. I dunno if there's anything decent for free on the windows platform but have a look at softpedia, sourceforge and the like.

Hope this helps

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Yodaman Jer
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Posted: 3rd Jun 2012 21:04
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Linux was my next step actually. I just didn't want to have her files on my computer instead of the one in the office. Oh well, it would be easy to burn them to DVD and transport them that way once they're off the old hard drive.

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