Legit Reviews

went to turn on my PC and I get " disk read error press control alt delete to reset" I can get into bios fine but no boot. I have tried checking and or moving the HDD connector to a different plug but still same problem. Bios shows the drive connected. Do I have a blown HDD or could it be the MOBO ?

Sounds like the drive died. If you can slave it to another machine or in an external dock/drive cage and see if it will show up .

I called the IT dept. where I work and the guy siad something about a program I could load onto a disk or flash drive that could test the drive to see if it works. Anyone know about that? also I moved it to the slave position on my current set up and BIOS showed it moved does that mean anything? I can't think of how it could have blown with no hint it was going out. I had Smart HDD inabled in BIOS and the system was off. anyway I am just trying to recover as much data as I can.

The drive may work enough that the bios will pick it up, but the internal moving parts have failed. From the sounds of it the drive is gone.

If you put it in a completely different system and tried to read the drive and it windows doesn't see it then I'm 98% sure the data is toast and the drive is dead.

on the manufacturer website should be a diagnostic program you can download to check the drive status. But i starting to agree with bubba here that drive could be bad. reason why I say this, is because I had a friends computer all of sudden started to BSOD, or windows would lock up on boot up, I had him replace the HDD and everything works fine.

I slaved it and it is readable. Could I use a program to copy the whole drive to another HDD? What could have happened that I can get into it and see the files but it will not boot??

boot record got messed up somehow. You could image the drive but it will still have the messed up boot record.

I would copy the important data off, then redo the install. Who knows if it was the board or if it was a virus that messed up the boot record.

Is there a way to move a whole program including saved files related to it over to the "new drive".

if all of the program files are in a single folder (i doubt they are). Some games are like that, but any more program files are spread out all over the drive in common shared DLL folders, program folders, user folders.

Easier to back up the data files, format the drive, reinstall windows, reinstall the programs, update programs, then restore the data files.

Once you have the system back the way you want it, get something like Acronis True Image. You can basically photocopy the drive into an image file and store that somewhere on an external drive. Back up data along the way for normal use, if a drive dies or a virus kills the install, you can re-image the drive, update all the programs, restore the data.

Either way, backups for important data should be done regularly for all data, important stuff should have two copies.

I have a backup file I created on another HDD 6 months ago. How do I restore to that backup?

I have tried and the4 back up is no good. All I really need is the My documents and the my pictures folders. I cannot find either on on the older drive. Where are theyt??

depends on the version of windows.

In XP the folder is in the Documents and Settings folder, under that you will find the users name, under that will be the various folders for pictures,music,videos, etc...

In Vista and Win7 its in the Users folder, under the users name.

I find no folder with that name. I click on the drive and it opens a list of files including "program files" and others but no "documents and setting" folder appears.

If the old install was xp it should be there. If vista or windows 7 look for a "users" folder.

I guess its all gone. It is XP and the backup I created using XPs backup utility is useless and the documents and settings folder is no where to be found.I must have gotten hit with a targeted virus or something that deletes that folder or something. I even ran windows recovery console and it scanned all the drives and recognized no XP installed except on the drive I installed it on to slave the old one. Any ideas??