old windows 7 hdd inaccessible

[Seth_7]

Hi Folks. I'm new on here so go easy. I have a moderate knowledge of computing but haven't been able to sort this problem. If there's a solution somewhere on here please point me to right direction. My windows 7 laptop hdd went pop so I installed a new one no problem. However, i'm trying to access the files on the old hdd with no luck. I have changed the permissions and ownership with success but still unable to access the hdd. I have the hdd powered up and connected through a usb port. It shows up as F drive and has been named recovery. If I click on the drive I can see from the properties there is over 4 gig of data within. I can see within the drive a folder called recovery and an xml document called ADRInfos which is an xml document. I can access the xml file but it means nothing to me. The recovery folder shows it about 1.56mb of data but i can't see in the folder. It seems the root F drive which contains the folder and xml file has about 4gb of data within which I can't access. Any help with accessing this would be gratefully received. Thanks in advance.

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Hey there, Seth. Welcome to the community!

What exactly do you mean by "went pop"? I mean, if the drive itself has some sort of issues, physical or otherwise, this might be preventing you from accessing the data and not permissions (unless you've had it password protected).
You could try to access the files via Ubuntu Live USB (this is basically a freeware, bootable, portable version of Linux), to see if the drive is properly recognized and if you can get to your data. Another option would be data recovery software like the programs from these suggestions: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-1644496/lost-data-recovery.html and http://pcsupport.about.com/od/filerecovery/tp/free-file-recovery-programs.htm.

Hope that helps. Please let me know how it goes.
Boogieman_WD

 

[Rookie_MIB]

Here's the kicker. The recovery partition is the one that the laptop manufacturers build into the HDD file system to allow for reinstalling the OEM windows installation (wiping the main partition in the process) and also contains the other files for potentially fixing boot problems with the PC. It's the equivalent of a recovery CD, just on the HDD instead. It has none of your files - those were on the other partition.

What you could do, is get into the disk partitioning and see what you can find out about the drive.

Open a command prompt (Start - Run - in the box, type CMD and hit enter).

In the command prompt type 'diskpart' - hit enter.
type 'list disk' hit enter.

This will show the physical disks. Assuming only your new HDD in the system, and the 'broken' disk, the new HDD should be disk 0, the other should be disk 1. You might be able to tell from the size.

type 'select disk 1' - hit enter.
type 'list partition' - hit enter.

This will show the available partitions on the drive. The main partition where your data was should be partition 1, the recovery should be partition 2. If both partitions show up, then they should be mountable. If you only show one partition, the recovery partition, the data is most likely gone and you're hosed. If you show both partitions...

type 'select partition 1' hit enter.
type 'assign' hit enter.

This selects the partition where your data should be, and 'assign' tells windows to find and give it a drive letter. If it assigns a drive letter, you should be able to then access the data.

Let us know how this goes.

 

[hang-the-9]

Hi Folks. I'm new on here so go easy. I have a moderate knowledge of computing but haven't been able to sort this problem. If there's a solution somewhere on here please point me to right direction. My windows 7 laptop hdd went pop so I installed a new one no problem. However, i'm trying to access the files on the old hdd with no luck. I have changed the permissions and ownership with success but still unable to access the hdd. I have the hdd powered up and connected through a usb port. It shows up as F drive and has been named recovery. If I click on the drive I can see from the properties there is over 4 gig of data within. I can see within the drive a folder called recovery and an xml document called ADRInfos which is an xml document. I can access the xml file but it means nothing to me. The recovery folder shows it about 1.56mb of data but i can't see in the folder. It seems the root F drive which contains the folder and xml file has about 4gb of data within which I can't access. Any help with accessing this would be gratefully received. Thanks in advance.

If all you see is the recovery folder, that is only the restore partition from the OEM setup (so when you select to do a factory reset, that is where the laptop reads the Windows setup from). If this was your original hard drive you should be seeing a lot more than 4 gb of data and a lot more than just a recovery folder. Did you do anything to the original hard drive before you replaced it?