Corrupted HDD Data Extraction?

[jmoney330]

Hi all,

I'm in the process of building a new PC and I just recently pulled the HDD out of my old system that had been dormant for a few years (HDD Corrupted and I bought a MacBook). I'm not sure how it corrupted, and whether its a physical component failure or a software corruption. I'm leaning towards a software corruption because I was attempting to remove some Malware or a virus or something off of it when it suddenly restarted and blue-screened and I had not been able to boot it since.

So my question is, would I be able to plug it up to my new system and possibly recover some of the data on it maybe via a recovery tool? And if it is a software related issue possibly reformat the drive and use it? It's not a special HDD or anything, just a WD Caviar Green but 1TB of Storage is 1TB of Storage lol...

And if it is possible would it be able to infect my new HDD with the same malware from before by attempting this?

Any insight is helpful!

Thanks,
Jeff

 

[JaredDM]

It certainly should be possible to connect the drive to another system and read the files from it. There are all sorts of USB -> SATA adapters as well as HDD docks that can connect it. It might just recognize the files system of the old drive and mount it fine.

If not I would recommend that you try using R-Studio demo from R-TT to scan it and see if it recognizes the file system. There are also some free data recovery tools, but they are not nearly as powerful as R-Studio.

As for catching a virus from an old drive is concerned, you don't need to be overly worried about it. If you're only copying pictures, documents, etc. it's unlikely that a virus could get transferred. Just avoid trying to copy/run any executable files from the drive.

 

[jmoney330]

It certainly should be possible to connect the drive to another system and read the files from it. There are all sorts of USB -> SATA adapters as well as HDD docks that can connect it. It might just recognize the files system of the old drive and mount it fine.

If not I would recommend that you try using R-Studio demo from R-TT to scan it and see if it recognizes the file system. There are also some free data recovery tools, but they are not nearly as powerful as R-Studio.

As for catching a virus from an old drive is concerned, you don't need to be overly worried about it. If you're only copying pictures, documents, etc. it's unlikely that a virus could get transferred. Just avoid trying to copy/run any executable files from the drive.

Thank you Jared!

I just plan to power it and connect it via SATA to the motherboard to attempt to read the files. I'm only going to be copying some old FL Studio files and some documents and things of that nature.

Hopefully it is software related corruption and not a bad component.

If that is the case do you think it would be possible to reformat the drive and wipe it clean and continue using it should everything go as planned?

Thanks!

-Jeff