Thank you Cornelius - bookmarked for future reference

Wasn't aware of those either Cornelius, have you had any experience of using these? In my experience I haven't had much luck with these tools. 

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A computer at the office has decided to give up the ghost and blow its motherboard (so i am told by a computer tech)

The problem is the PC Hard drive had a fair few files (word/excel/ emails) that need to be saved, the PC Tech is saying he is having problems obtaining any information off the drive when he is putting it into a cradle on another PC i presume.

No Back data as it was a stand alone PC

Any ideas? Please

It's been some years since I was a 'hands on techie' - Is the HDD being installed into the new machine as a primary or secondary hdd?

If primary then my understanding was that the chassis of the new machine (Processor, RAM, video card etc etc etc) had to be an exact match of the 'dead' machine for the HDD to boot from as it will boot using the drivers from the dead machine. If it is being added on the new machine as a secondary HDD then my understanding is that as long as the new machine recognises the filing system of the added HDD (i.e. hopefully the same) it should read at least the normal data elements of the HDD perfectly okay allowing you to transfer the data from one to another.

Happy to be corrected as it has been a long time since I played that much

Last edited by 2nd Rower on Tue Jun 17 2008 10:00am. Edited 1 time in total

I'm not sure, i presume the PC tech is placing it in a cradle as a second machine.

The problem we has was when it was switched on it said something about a boot drive, he thought it was something to do with the bios battery, but that seems to have been fine.

If he is simply trying to retrieve data from the HD, then he needs to add as a secondary drive on a healthy PC. Simple.

Naturally if he is a techie of any substance he should know this and will set the jumpers accordingly to access the drive.

If he is trying to get the old PC working, bash him on the head and state that the data is of upmost importance and he should be following option 1 otherwsie you will fire him!  L322 Big Daddy SUPERCHARGED 5.0 Autobiography - Here & Now!

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Well if the new machine boots without the HDD from the dead machine connected then the rules of elimination tell you that the new machine is okay.

So you need to get more info as to the exact config and error when the HDD from the dead machine is connected! Sounds like he could be trying to boot from the HDD and the machine is not recognising it as a bootable disk and is looking for one?!?!?! This is all speculation and guess work though (based on the limited info)!

Depends what type of disk it is... he shouldn't forget that IDE/PATA/SATA all work differently from each other and have different interfaces, and as such have different methods for making the disk available on another machine. By rights, unless the filesystem is encrypted there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to connect it to another machine and access everything that was on there before, presuming you have the right controller to connect it to.

More info required... or you could just leave it what appear to be the very capable hands of your "engineer"  

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Well the engineers still working on it ..........and ordering the new machine etc

He is suprised that the data is been so stubborn, but i think when the mother boards blown the HDD has been effected to (but what do i know )

If he fails to get the infomation off, my mother works at a solictors and they have a department that sorts the PC that go bang out and do data retrieval so we give them a shot too all been well


We'll just have to wait and see

Many moons ago we had a YTS trainee in working with us and there was a load of PCs that needed to be moved from one floor to another. He was complaining that he was going to do his back in (in the days before health & safety got in the way of everything and a PC weighed 400 tons), so we suggested that to make his life easier and the PCs lighter to carry, that he delete all the data off the hard disks because the fuller the hard disk, the more it weighed He managed to work his way through a few machines before someone took pity on him... he didn't think it was very funny for some reason  

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