Salvage mission: my hard drive.

Nine Toes · Mon 09/10/2006 08:40:55

Okey-dokey. Here's the skinny: A few nights ago, during a very dramatic and theatrical thunderstorm, my computer got hit.

I tinkered with it, and finally decided that the ancient, Frankenstein-of-a-beast was toast. So, I took out the hard-drive, and threw the rest of the PC in the dumpster.

I've got a lot of important stuff on the hard drive (our finances, our bank account activity, not to mention, all of my art and stuff).

I'd like to know if anyone can tell me a way to salvage all of that information? Would it be possible to hook it up to my new computer, and copy everything onto the new PC's hard disk?

Nostradamus · Mon 09/10/2006 08:53:10

Well you must try that. It is qite possible the motherboard got burnt but the hard drive is OK.
If that doesn't work you'll have no alternative but pay a thounsand or so euros\dollar to a restorage company which has machines you can't buy for home that can restore information (they can't prmoise to restore everything though).
And buy a UPS with your new PC. That way it will never happen again.

dasjoe · Mon 09/10/2006 11:26:00

Quote from: Nostradamus on Mon 09/10/2006 08:53:10
yadayada

wrong. in about all aspects.

the surge probably busted your psu, not your mainboard.
yes, put your old hdd in the new pc. then try to access it. don't write to it. don't defragment it or change it in any way. run some data recovery tool (i've heard good stuff about ontrack, see if you can recover your files with that :)

you don't need an ups for power surges, you can get a quite cheap filter for them. look for power surge protectors.

BOYD1981 · Mon 09/10/2006 11:53:33

yeh, what hajo said.
just be sure to set the jumper on the back of the drive (little plastic thing on some pins surrounded some other pins) to the slave position and you may also have to go into your BIOS to check for a 'auto-detect hard drives' or similar option so that the motherboard actually knows it's there.
and even though you can get surge protectors and UPS it's always best to unplug your pc and phone during a thunderstorm because all them millions of volts aren't really going to either of them any good.

LGM · Mon 09/10/2006 15:46:00

hajo is correct, as is Boyd. Switch the jumpers on the back of the harddrive to slave, and just hook it into your new PC. Windows should boot normally and you should be able to access your files in My Computer.

Nine Toes · Mon 09/10/2006 19:30:05

The computer was off when the storm hit, but my wife didn't know that appliances could still get hit when they're off. Actually, I didn't really know that either... consider it a $300 lesson learned.

I'm not sure exactly which component took the surge. I took it all apart, and the motherboard had some spots on the back that looked like someone had smeared Elmer's glue on it. However, I opened up the power source, and there was this black glob on the circuit board. It looked like something had melted, only I couldn't tell what.

I swapped out the power source, and it wouldn't turn on. So, I figured it was toast.

I did hook up the hard drive to my new computer. I got almost everything that I needed off of it. It was pretty simple. I was just afraid something was going to short out and my new computer would be just as useless as my old one.

The whole reason why I asked in the first place was because of the master/slave issue. That, and my new computer apparently has 2 hard disks (one for storage, and one for FAT32... but I only can see one of them

... ). The old computer only had one hard drive, and was a considerably older machine with an older OS.

The new machine's hard drive is also smaller (in actual, physical size), I couldn't get the older hard drive to fit into the rack inside the machine.

Domino · Mon 09/10/2006 21:10:58

I know it really sucks when you lose a whole hard drive full of porn. That is why you have to remember to backup all of the juicy stuff to a CD.

Nostradamus · Tue 10/10/2006 09:33:16

Quote from: hajo on Mon 09/10/2006 11:26:00
Quote from: Nostradamus on Mon 09/10/2006 08:53:10
yadayada
wrong. in about all aspects.

Well excuse me mr. know-it-all mr. genius of the century. I just said that he should try to hook up his old HDD on the new computer and it will probably work, which he did. I also said that if it's toast there's still some rich ass comapnies that could extract info. And a UPS is always recommended. All true. It's people like you that discourage me from helping or expressing opinions in these forums.

dasjoe · Tue 10/10/2006 10:55:47

it's people like you who make me feel even more superior ;)
seriously, sorry if i offended you but please don't give people advise about stuff you don't really have a clue about.
not saying you wanted to spread misinformation, but a quick read of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_recovery#Logical_damage and you would've learnt something that could be brought to immediate use. wouldn't that be awesome? aren't you trying to absorb as much useful information as possible? so, do it now!

Quote from: Nostradamus on Mon 09/10/2006 08:53:10
If that doesn't work you'll have no alternative but pay a thounsand or so euros\dollar to a restorage company which has machines you can't buy for home

http://buyonline.ontrack.com/ecom/catalog.asp - seems to be pretty buyable for me.

Quote from: Nostradamus on Mon 09/10/2006 08:53:10
And buy a UPS with your new PC. That way it will never happen again.

let me show you this, it's the power plug of an ups after a (strong) surge:

sure, go ahead and buy an ups if that gives you the feeling of perfect security. but keep in mind that it's just an illusion. anyway, his problem is solved. let's let this thread die :)