Document recovery from an old hard drive

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My elder sister had a defective PC because the hard disk had stopped working. The 120 GB hard drive never made any noise. It just stopped working. She bought a new hard drive and reinstalled the Windows XP Service Pack 2 and then the PC is up and running again. But the problem is, she saved a lot of her documents in the hard drive. Yesterday, she gave me the hard disk and asked me to assist her in recovering the documents from the drive.

I have installed the hard drive on my PC as a slave, both are SATA drives. I tried to look at her old drive but a message that says it's unreadable came up. Other attempts say the hard drive is corrupted. I have tried a few free programs such as pci_filerecovery.exe but the drive doesn't even show up. I also tried the pci_us_smartrecovery.exe for photos, but most of the BMPs and JPEGs recovered aren't visible and they both run slowly. She told me that she had set one of her folders as hidden and encrypted.

I think recovering encrypted files can be hectic. Is there a way, or software that I can use to recover the data from the drive? I need your help guys.

Thanks.

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Best Answer by mackycarandang
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Answered By 0 points N/A #104657

Document recovery from an old hard drive

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Hi,

I have already seen this issue about having trouble with the hard drive, and I have here some information and resolutions to your problem. Hard disks are commonly known as hard drives. It is commonly used in desktop and laptop computers to store various kinds of files, such as music, video and document files. We can transfer files from the hard disk going to another storage device, like external hard drive.

If you accidentally delete the files from your hard disk, you can recover them using a free data recovery program, which you can download for free online. I have a link where you can download recovery tool for free so you don’t need to purchase it.

  • Download the free recovery program on the above link.
  • Install the program on your PC.
  • Run the application by double clicking the icon located on the desktop screen.
  • Select ‘Recover – Advanced’ option to continue.
  • Click the ‘NTFS Partition Recovery’ button on the window that you will see.
  • Choose your hard disk from the drive selection menu.
  • The program is defaulted to 'display default partition's, so we just need to click Next to go to the next step.
  • After clicking next, the hard drive will scan all the files that you have in the hard drive.
  • Once it's done scanning, it will give you a list of programs. You need to select the file that you want to restore on the computer and then click finish.
  • The files will be displayed like a tree structure on the window.
  • Click root folder or the very top folder to select every data and click the  ‘Save All’ option under the toolbar from the tools menu.
  • Select a drive where you wish to save the data or on another external hard drive.
  • Click OK.
  • We can now access the files once it's done restoring it.

There are several ways on how to recover files on the hard disk or deleted files on the computer. All you need to do is to download the recovery tool on the computer and just follow the steps that I posted and then it will be recovered.

You can ask your friends about what is the recovery file that they are using and if they already tested it.  This is needed just to make sure that you won't waste time and effort.

Hopefully, I was able to help you with this issue.

 

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Answered By 0 points N/A #104658

Document recovery from an old hard drive

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Hi,

Based on your problem, you should have also tried using your WinXP installer. This might solve the problem. You can run your WinXP installer and access its recovery console feature just as when you are about to format. Its environment is in DOS mode. You have to specify first the drive letter, for example C: before initiating the check disk. To do this, you must enter the specified drive to be checked, shall we say G: and then type CHKDSK. This method will repair the corrupted disk as well as recover those files.

If all of the above fails, you can use Avast!BART(Bootable Antivirus and recovery tool). This utility had never failed me since I started using this tool. This utility offers various programs like Antivirus, disk checker, data shredder, junk file remover, registry cleaner and servant salamander. I will only discuss the disk checker, junk file remover, registry cleaner and servant salamander since these are the only options in dealing with your problem.

The disk checker is similar to those check disks of windows, however, it is more advanced. In this method, the selected drive will be scanned for errors and will repair bad sectors as well as recovering the lost files.

The registry cleaner is still similar to the registry cleaners out there, however, it has many options you can choose from, depending on your preferences.

The junk file remover is a program that locates broken shortcuts, unused or useless files. Useless files are those that are left overs of programs that has been uninstalled on that drive.

Finally, the servant salamander. This tool allows you to browse a certain drive and it can even let you copy, paste, delete, and move a file that you wish. The servant salamander's interface is presented in two groups, these are the first drive and the second.

The default value of drives is in your CD. So try changing the drives according to what you are going to browse so you can manipulate files easily. Don't worry about using this tool as it is user friendly.

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