A power supply problem

[Doodus]

Hey i'm new on the forum and I hope that someone can help me!

I have a PC at home and the power supply has failed. I plan on upgrading the computer anyway and getting an entirely new machine but there is some data I want to retrieve off of this one if I can. I have tried putting the HDD in another machine but I think due to the fact its a dell machine it wont let me boot from the hard drive and nor will it let me access it without formatting. Is there anything I can buy or anything I can do to get some power to it so that i can copy some files off before I scrap this shitty machine?

Thanks in advance

[grunt_408]

http://cgi.ebay.com/USB-2-0-IDE-2-5-...efaultDomain_0

And welcome to TPU

[Doodus]

Originally Posted by Craigleberry

http://cgi.ebay.com/USB-2-0-IDE-2-5-...efaultDomain_0

Thanks for the reply, but won't this have the same effect as when I connected the HDD to my other computer? Wouldn;t it still require formatting in order to access all of the data?

[grunt_408]

No. If you want the data from the drive. Do not format it. Just hook it up to another PC via the USB and your good. You may need to jumper the drive to master if it is an older type IDE drive.

You can do it by hooking it up to the motherboard on another machine just make sure it is set to boot from the PC's main drive and not that one and jumpers set accordingly (SLAVE) if it is an older drive

[Doodus]

Originally Posted by Craigleberry

No. If you want the data from the drive. Do not format it. Just hook it up to another PC via the USB and your good. You may need to jumper the drive to master if it is an older type IDE drive.

You can do it by hooking it up to the motherboard on another machine just make sure it is set to boot from the PC's main drive and not that one and jumpers set accordingly if it is an older drive

Yea I did hook it up to my other PC by connecting it to the MB but it wouldn't let me access the drive. Before it could be used it needed formatting which I obviously can't do. I'll try reconnecting it to the master tonight and see if that makes a difference.

Thanks for your help

[grunt_408]

Originally Posted by Doodus

Yea I did hook it up to my other PC by connecting it to the MB but it wouldn't let me access the drive. Before it could be used it needed formatting which I obviously can't do. I'll try reconnecting it to the master tonight and see if that makes a difference.

Thanks for your help

How do mean it would not let you access the drive? Did you try booting into its O/S? Or did you boot into the Pc you where trying it on and it does not show in My Computer or Disk Managment?
If you are hooking it to your motherboard. It needs to be a slave drive. Boot into your Pc's O/S and hopefully you can see it in My Computer.

[Doodus]

Originally Posted by Craigleberry

How do mean it would not let you access the drive? Did you try booting into its O/S? Or did you boot into the Pc you where trying it on and it does not show in My Computer or Disk Managment?
If you are hooking it to your motherboard. It needs to be a slave drive. Boot into your Pc's O/S and hopefully you can see it in My Computer.

I booted into 7 and in my computer you could see the drive, but when you click on it, it says it needs formatting to use it. I think there is a problem with the partition header, there may be some corrupt data on there. I know someone with some software that may be able to fix it so i might give him a try if all else fails.

[de.das.dude]

turn on the other machine. let it boot. then connect your HDD. goto device manager and "search for hardware changes". you should be able to copy off all files other than windows files.

[robn]

Originally Posted by Doodus

I booted into 7 and in my computer you could see the drive, but when you click on it, it says it needs formatting to use it. I think there is a problem with the partition header, there may be some corrupt data on there. I know someone with some software that may be able to fix it so i might give him a try if all else fails.

Ok, you are doing it right! It might well be corrupted, but you can get lucky. My favourite software for recovering data is TestDisk / PhotoRec.

TestDisk can
Fix partition table, recover deleted partition
Recover FAT32 boot sector from its backup
Rebuild FAT12/FAT16/FAT32 boot sector
Fix FAT tables
Rebuild NTFS boot sector
Recover NTFS boot sector from its backup
Fix MFT using MFT mirror
Locate ext2/ext3/ext4 Backup SuperBlock
Undelete files from FAT, NTFS and ext2 filesystem
Copy files from deleted FAT, NTFS and ext2/ext3/ext4 partitions.

Secondly, if no luck with that try out spinrite, though you have to buy it. It can reconstruct data patterns.