Data Transfer From old to new hard drive

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sobeit
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Data Transfer From old to new hard drive

Post by sobeit »

I installed a new SATA 500gb barracuda hard drive for a friend, and now he wants some of the data from the old hard drive. The old hard drive would not boot up to get to windows desktop, therefore the old hard drive may be corrupted. I connect the old hard drive to the 2nd primary, boot it up with the new hard drive, went into My Computers and the old is located in the E: drive, double click it to open and a small window shows up saying, "Access Denied". I'm am not able to get into the drive at all, I even had the image software to try cloning the data but there seemed to be issue with the old hard drive not being able to get it open to even view it.

How can I get the data from the old hard drive to the new one?
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MrAl
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Re: Data Transfer From old to new hard drive

Post by MrAl »

Hi,


What operating system is it using?
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sobeit
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Re: Data Transfer From old to new hard drive

Post by sobeit »

This one is a Vista, on a e-machine computer.
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CeaSaR
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Re: Data Transfer From old to new hard drive

Post by CeaSaR »

Is the old drive set up as a slave? I'm not sure of how to do that on a SATA drive.
There may be a jumper on the back that you have to move to set it to a slave drive
or you might need to do that via software (BIOS?).

Of course, if you could not get it boot up in the first place, you may not be able to
get into it now.

Have you tried to access the drive through safemode? If you can, move everything
over that your friend might want as you may have to reformat the old drive to make
it useable again.

Good luck,

CeaSaR
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haklesup
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Re: Data Transfer From old to new hard drive

Post by haklesup »

If all that was bad was the boot sector (AKA Track 0) then it would be useless as a C:\ (AKA Boot drive) but you would still be able to access files as another drive letter.

However since you can't mount the drive at all using an OS or test utility, the drive really is failed and there won't be anything YOU can do to get to the data. It's impossible to say if the drive platters, the read heads or the electronics in the IC chips is the failed part from here.

Does BIOS detect the drive properly? if not, don't even bother with anything in the OS or DIY recovery S/W


There is a bunch of data recovery programs with a range of prices. Its a crap shoot if any will work for you. Search on Data Recovery software and start doing homework to select one that might work. Check the websites, review the manuals, ask on computer forums etc. Unfortunately, the drive usually has to be mountable.

If the platters are still good (AKA, heads did not crash, not dropped etc.) but the failure is in the heads or electronics then theoretically it's possible to get to the data by moving the platters into a known good drive of similar manufacture. This usually is not a DIY job and there are a hand full of companies who do this. Just search for Data Recovery companies. You may pay approx $150 to just evaluate the drive to see if the data is recoverable and about 2X to 5X more than that cloning the data onto DVDs. My prices are just estimates. If you go this route. I'd be interested to find out the actual cost.

Just have to ask if the data is worth that much to your friend.
sobeit
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Re: Data Transfer From old to new hard drive

Post by sobeit »

Hey guys thanks for your input,
I ended up taking the new one out and installing the old one back in to try to boot it up, (doing this I didn't want to ruin the new drive, as to finding the problem with the old). And with the SATA drives they do not need the jumpers, the os is to know which is which by the connection in the MB, Supposedly. Any how, I tried it safe mode but the same thing happens, it will start loading at the beginning and then it seems it'll go to windows but it doesn't and stays with a black screen with ability to see the cursor and able to move it around, so that's telling me it isn't frozen just isn't going any further with the os.

I now am able to get as far as the recovery screen and I want to recover the drive, I get as far as the Window for Administrator and password. The person that owns this does not remember the password from which he access it from the beginning a couple years ago.

How can I go about getting it to recovery skipping the administrative password?
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MrAl
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Re: Data Transfer From old to new hard drive

Post by MrAl »

Hi,


Good luck with that one...

I was thinking maybe the drive is entirely encrypted, so that it will only be accessible using the
same log on by booting to that drive. You'll notice that if you encrypt individual folders and then
take the hard drive out and put it into another computer, you wont be able to access the data
under that folder unless you have the security key stored on a floppy disk. Trouble is, i think
you have to create the floppy disk key from within the Windows op sys desktop and i dont know
any way around this. This is just a guess as this may not be the real problem.

Another possibility is that it can not read the disk format. I dont know if Vista works with
FAT32 so if the drive is FAT32 and Vista cant read that, perhaps that is the problem.
Just another guess here though. I dont have Vista anymore so i cant try this.

You may be able to boot to DOS and then read the drive using DOS and maybe copy files
that way. You would have the drive installed, but a floppy in the drive to boot to with some
DOS or another that you could boot with. This probably wont work either if the drive is
encrypted but if not it might read it ok.
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CeaSaR
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Re: Data Transfer From old to new hard drive

Post by CeaSaR »

It sounds like the owner somehow logged off and could not log back on because the password has been forgotten.

Hmmm...

Did the original drive work before the new one was installed? If so, the bios may have remembered the ID number of
the drive and needs to have the correct password to continue as the new drive may have taken over precedence for
remembering log-in. Don't quote me on that as I really don't know much about Vista.

Do you have a restore disk that would allow you to restore just the OS without reformatting the HDD? You might be
able to do that and get back into the disk and at least burn things to a CD/DVD. You might even be able to put the
restored drive back to the secondary and use drag-n-drop procedures once you can mount the drive.

Hope there's a straw here you can actually grasp.

CeaSaR
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reloadron
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Re: Data Transfer From old to new hard drive

Post by reloadron »

Access Denied because you need to take ownership of files and folders. Try a Google of Take Ownership of Files and Folders and you'll get countless hits on the subject. What you are seeing is normal. Be sure to spell out the OS is Vista in your Google. That would be my guess.

<EDIT>

This Link should get you going in the right direction in Vista.

</EDIT>

Ron
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MrAl
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Re: Data Transfer From old to new hard drive

Post by MrAl »

Hi Ron,


I am sort of guessing here, but dont you have to be logged on in the first place to do
all that stuff?
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Re: Data Transfer From old to new hard drive

Post by reloadron »

Hi Ya MrAl

Well in reading the original post:
I installed a new SATA 500gb barracuda hard drive for a friend, and now he wants some of the data from the old hard drive. The old hard drive would not boot up to get to windows desktop, therefore the old hard drive may be corrupted. I connect the old hard drive to the 2nd primary, boot it up with the new hard drive, went into My Computers and the old is located in the E: drive, double click it to open and a small window shows up saying, "Access Denied". I'm am not able to get into the drive at all, I even had the image software to try cloning the data but there seemed to be issue with the old hard drive not being able to get it open to even view it.

How can I get the data from the old hard drive to the new one?
Now my understanding is that they installed a new 500 GB new SATA hard drive. I assumed they installed the OS (Vista) to the new HDD. They say they connected the old HDD (the one with the corrupt OS) as a secondary and actually that part makes no sense to me as with SATA (assuming the second old HDD was SATA) there is no primary, secondary, master or slave). Anyway, at this point they boot the machine and the old HDD now shows as Drive E:\ in My Computer. That makes sense since they connected the new 500 GB hard drive to the port the original HDD was connected to. Therefore the BIOS will still look to boot from the HDD on that port. However if they double click it they get the message Access Denied. They would likely get the same message if they Right Click the drive and choose Open. I should have suggested a Right Click and choose Properties then look at the Sharing and Security tabs. They would likely get the same access denied message.

The problem is that the new OS install didn't create that drive and actually has no ownership of the files and folders on the drive. Therefore the drive will throw an access denied error. The original data (My Documents) is likely there and just fine if we assume the OS became corrupt but they can't access it. Working in XP taking ownership is easy but Vista has new security features that involve doing what is covered in the link. Since I was at work I just suggested the link and I figure the error is a result of a corrupt OS. Based on the information provided I did several guesses and assumptions but the error is quite common in a situation like this. We also don't know what if any actions were taken to repair the corrupt install so since they are at this point I figure taking ownership of the old HDD is what is needed.

Actually if they have the Vista disk they could boot from the Vista disk and let Vista try a repair of the old disk through the recovery console but I figure since they are where they are I would try to take ownership of the old HDD under the new install.

Just My Take
Ron
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Lenp
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Re: Data Transfer From old to new hard drive

Post by Lenp »

Before you go over the edge, try this....

I have pulled many drive's data out of the grave with an external USB adapter. There are many and they all seem to work equally. I recently had a laptop drive that kept thrashing on boot. Replaced the drive, loaded the OS and used the external adapter to recover ALL the user's data! The adapter is not wasted money if it doesn't work since another drive can be used with it as an external drive.

Len
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sobeit
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Re: Data Transfer From old to new hard drive

Post by sobeit »

Thank you all for your inputs, I did alot of what all of you suggested, and I am now all set and pleased with this set up.
Thanks again.
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CeaSaR
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Re: Data Transfer From old to new hard drive

Post by CeaSaR »

sobeit,

What was it that finally allowed you to get to the files and copy them? Inquiring minds want to know...

CeaSaR
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