Can I retrive my files?

BigFreddy

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Aug 8, 2013
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My Dell laptop was damaged because of water. When the water damaged occurred with the Dell, the last time it powered up I had the message to repair windows (8), but I was not able to. It shutdown before I could do anything. I believe the windows 8 failed because I kept trying to cut it on and fried the motherboard. I tried putting the hard drive in my old Compaq laptop (win7) to try and retrieve my stuff, but I was getting a bootable drive not found please insert Operating System.


The Hard Drive Had win8.1 and the Compaq has win7 could that be why the drive was not found? If I buy a USB hard Drive adapter will I be able to retrieve my files?
 
Solution
The OS on the drive does not matter so much, what matters is that the OS has to be configured/installed for the computer to work properly. As it is configured for Dell, it is unlikely to work in the first place... that said, if the HDD was working then it should attempt to boot into windows and then crash. The fact that it is saying that there is just no OS found is a bad sign that it may have taken the HDD out with the motherboard.

Here is what you should do:
1) put the Compaq back together, and make sure it is working properly.
2) pick up a HDD to USB adapter. These can often be found for $5-20, and I personally like to get ones that can do PATA, laptop PATA, and SATA hard drives as it opens up options for recovering files from...
The OS on the drive does not matter so much, what matters is that the OS has to be configured/installed for the computer to work properly. As it is configured for Dell, it is unlikely to work in the first place... that said, if the HDD was working then it should attempt to boot into windows and then crash. The fact that it is saying that there is just no OS found is a bad sign that it may have taken the HDD out with the motherboard.

Here is what you should do:
1) put the Compaq back together, and make sure it is working properly.
2) pick up a HDD to USB adapter. These can often be found for $5-20, and I personally like to get ones that can do PATA, laptop PATA, and SATA hard drives as it opens up options for recovering files from older machines. this is the one I use, but only because I found it on sale for $5 a while back: http://www.amazon.com/Vantec-CB-ISATAU2-Supports-2-5-Inch-5-25-Inch/dp/B000J01I1G/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1404044250&sr=8-1&keywords=HDD+to+usb+adapter
3) attach the dell HDD to you win7 machine using the USB adapter. If it is a traditional HDD then you should feel/hear the drive spin up, and lights should blink on the adapter. If it is an SSD then you will just see the data transfer light blink on the adapter (no moving parts). After the drive installs on your system you should be able to browse and copy files from the dell drive to the Compaq drive.

If the drive does absolutely nothing, then I feat you are up a creek. There are data recover houses that can get information off for you, but these are business disaster recovery services, and are priced accordingly, so as an individual it is not likely worth looking into.

In the future keep in mind that there is a bit of a saying when it comes to data storage "If you don't have it in 3 places, then you probably didn't really want it anyways". Keep one copy on the computer you are using, a 2nd copy of important files on a local external HDD flash drive or computer, and then a 3rd copy somewhere outside the home.
For myself, and what I suggest others do, is that I use a cloud storage solution (in my case OneDrive, but other cloud storage solutions work just as well, but as I have all Windows 8 computers and phones OneDrive is the simpler choice) and tie my desktop, documents, and pictures folders to it. Then, any time I make a change to my common files in those folders then it automatically gets backed up online. When I then log into my laptop or wife's PC then it gets synced to those devices as well. This means that all of my files are always on each of my computers, plus stored online.
Now, some files are too large, or too sensitive to practically store online. Things like home videos, bulk pictures, legal documents, and my music collection there are practical issues to backing things up via cloud storage, so my dad and I send these files back and forth to each other. Back when the files were small we did it on floppys, then we graduated to CD's and DVD's, then flash drives, and now we have 2TB HDDs that we mail back and forth once a year. As this is only done once a year it does not exactly work as a real-time backup. But if there was a major disaster that hits one coast or the other, then it is nice to know that there is a good chance that most of those home videos or pictures are safe. If the house burns down then it is going to be a bad day, but I will not feel the need to go back in to save family photos because my dad will be able to send me the HDD once I get my life back together, and then we can reprint everything.

Perhaps you do not need to be quite as paranoid as I am about loosing files, but you should at least do the 3-places thing using a cloud storage solution to keep some redundancy.
 
Solution