Ok, the back story.

My beat to trash Toshiba. I use this around the house, twp grandsons, yep, lid got broken a couple of times. Bought a used/refurb unit off the 'Bay a couple of years ago for 85 bucks complete with a cleaned hard drive and copy of Windows 10 installed (which I hate, a whole other story) and swapped out the hard drive from my old broken lid machine to the "new" one. Same drive, same numbers, etc. All fine since until the last Windows update which I inadvertently allowed to install.

Tried a number of times to reset to an earlier date to no avail, last night I tried again, it just locked up so I turned it off for the night. This morning, the screen of no return, starts to boot up and goes dead.

So I pulled the hard drive and changed it with the clean one that came with the laptop, it's in and as you see it works. But I have a lot of photos. genealogical research and such on the old hard drive. Is there anything I can do myself, do I need to see a professional (local guy wants a couple hundred dollars to try) or do I just forget it and go on?

Does your computer have a slot for additional hard-drives?

If so, you can make the 2nd hard-drive a slave and access it as a storage device. It's relatively easy to do but you have to have some savvy.

quote:

Originally posted by Shaql:
Does your computer have a slot for additional hard-drives?

If so, you can make the 2nd hard-drive a slave and access it as a storage device. It's relatively easy to do but you have to have some savvy.

No, it's a laptop. Don't think so anyways.

Get a USB external drive enclosure that will fit the drive, boot up the PC on the new drive, plug in the external USB drive, if it works windows should see it as a second drive and if it's readable you should be able to pull files.

link

I once had a drive that cratered the same way you describe. I wanted to salvage some files and was about to destroy it and decided to google for things to try. One of the most bizarre suggestions was to freeze the drive (in a bag) for 3-4 hours, then hook it up and try again. I tried it and it actually worked for about 15 minutes. It was more than enough to save a few docs and some pics and such. Hey, if nothing else works, give it a shot.

You're gonna need another drive and new Opsys install any way. I have a hdd dock that makes doing a temp usb drive a snap, you just plug it in. If you don't want an enclosure and all that that entails.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by HRK:
Get a USB external drive enclosure that will fit the drive, boot up the PC on the new drive, plug in the external USB drive, if it works windows should see it as a second drive and if it's readable you should be able to pull files.

link[/QUOTE

I was expecting a lot higher price for the external drive, that is doable. Next question, if the old drive is corrupted will it affect the "new" drive that I installed or is it read only? I'm pretty dense on these things. I'm surprised that I could swap the hard drives out without wrecking something.

quote:

Originally posted by 83v45magna:
I once had a drive that cratered the same way you describe. I wanted to salvage some files and was about to destroy it and decided to google for things to try. One of the most bizarre suggestions was to freeze the drive (in a bag) for 3-4 hours, then hook it up and try again. I tried it and it actually worked for about 15 minutes. It was more than enough to save a few docs and some pics and such. Hey, if nothing else works, give it a shot.

You're gonna need another drive and new Opsys install any way. I have a hdd dock that makes doing a temp usb drive a snap, you just plug it in. If you don't want an enclosure and all that that entails.

The "new" laptop came with a drive and Windows 10 pre-installed, I just swapped hard drives at the time as it was easier than going in and doing the password changes on my saved sites. So today I just swapped hard drives again and the dead one is on the table.

Since that was August '19 and I had the original laptop from 2013 it wasn't a bad run.

Not going to do any Windows updates, this will be the second time that hard drive has crashed due to a Windows update, first time was early 2019.

Don't have the old drive plugged in until you booted the laptop on the new drive, it see windows there and loads the operating system from the internal drive.

Then plug in the old drive in the USB external enclosure it should see it as a drive and since the operating system is running, shouldn't load anything its like plugging in a USB stick.

Just copy off the data files you want to save.

I have a variety of usb to hard drive connectors that I use ... like this one:

https://www.amazon.com/StarTec...B/dp/B00HJZJI84?th=1

Once you get your data recovered, consider a backup plan. ALL storage devices will fail, eventually. One copy is none, two is one, as the saying goes. If you had been doing proper backups, you would already have your data restored to the replacement drive. At the least, $69/year gets you 1TB of cloud storage with Microsoft365, or something similar.

HRK,

My hard drive is marked HDD2L02, so that enclosure you link to is the correct one, right?

Old Dino,

Is there any advantage to using the cable over the enclosure, they are similar in price.

Either case, I’ll need a wall wart to power it, right?

Told you I’m lost here!

Regarding the freezer thing, a Windoze update cratered the OS, it's not a physical problem. The freezer thing works when it's something mechanical (i.e., drive "clicks", etc.).

Cable vs. enclosure - I've had both over the years. If I plan on using the drive (or another 'bare" one you get somewhere) on an ongoing basis, I'll do the enclosure. If it's something one-off (like what you need to do, just copy files from old to new), I'll use the cable. Cable is easier to store when not needed too. You may or may not need a wall-wart - it may "self power" via USB. Depends on the enclosure or cable.

Good luck. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess it's going to be as easy as others here suggest. The biggest challenge may be actually finding the files you want to transfer. They are there, you'll just have to dig around.

quote:

Originally posted by shovelhead:
HRK,

My hard drive is marked HDD2L02, so that enclosure you link to is the correct one, right?

Old Dino,

Is there any advantage to using the cable over the enclosure, they are similar in price.

Either case, I’ll need a wall wart to power it, right?

Told you I’m lost here!

I don't really know the advantage of one over the other as I have not used an enclosure. Since I do not use the connectors very often the cords as easier for me to store in a gallon ziplock bag.

I don't use an external power source as the power for the connected external hard drive comes from the connecting cord.

Pretty much plug in and go. The external drive shows up in your file menu under "This PC" or something like that depending on your operating system.

Rule of thumb:

2.5" HDD and SSD will be ok with power from the SATA bus

3.5" HDD will need an external power source. Some adapter kits will come will a DC power source.

Here's One (Link)

quote:

HDD2L02

- Toshiba HDD2L02 - 640GB 5.4K RPM SATA 2.5" Hard Drive

I posted that as a reference, however it's for laptop SATA drives, just check and be sure your drive meets the parameters for the unit.

Supports USB 3.0 external, SATA-I/II/III internal; Works great with 2.5 inch 5mm/ 7mm/9.5mm/ SATA HDD/SSD.

If what you have is a 2.5 inch SATA drive it should work.. I would still suggest you look at that link to be sure...

sigcrazy7 ... I was thinking it was a 2.5 inch as it sounded like came out of a laptop. And yes, the 3.5 needs an external power source.

First personal rule of data recovery:

Once you get your laptop up and running, poug in your case with your dead drive and see if it get recognized as a working drive.

DO NOT WRITE (move or delete) stuff from the dead drive. Do not alter it, modify or change anything.
If you can read it, JUST COPY from it to your working machine and eventually from there to another resource.

Use your dead drive as READ ONLY!!

Good luck.

PS: your working drive won’t get compromised BUT you might experience it look like getting stuck if the computer is having a hard time reading the “dead” one.
Also, some parts of your dead drive might be unreadable but not all. If you fail reading this or that folder or item, just try some other folder or skip the ones that give you trouble.
Data recovery requires a LOT of patience and infinite retries.

0-0

BTW, do you know where to look?

Likely most of your stuff is in the Users/yourloginname/ folders.


0-0

quote:

Originally posted by old dino:
sigcrazy7 ... I was thinking it was a 2.5 inch as it sounded like came out of a laptop. And yes, the 3.5 needs an external power source.

It is a laptop, a Toshiba Satellite L875D-S7332

0-0, this is al new to me so I’ll be going slow on this.

Actually I’ve been trying on and off for the last couple of weeks to “backdate” this machine and I would get various error messages which turned into a total crash. No more will I allow Windows Updates to this machine nor use it anymore for anything more important than web surfing, that I’ll only do on my iPad, iPhone or the Apple Air I have.

Thank you all.

Another stupid question, the 2.5 refers to the width of the plug in connector, correct?

Because the overall width of the hard drive is about 2 3/4” but the plug is narrower.