[SOLVED] Salvaging Data From A Secondary Internal Hard Drive Following BSOD

[Skywalker33]

Can I salvage data from a secondary hard drive after the OS becomes corrupted? Windows 10 Pro crashed. No hardware issues, I have three 1TB Internal SSD drives on my PC. The OS is on the C Drive. The D and E internal drives contain only data. Assuming I need to reinstall Windows 10 Pro on the C Drive, can I retrieve my data files from the D and E Drives?

 

[Colif]

You should be able to reuse the data files since they are on a different drive to windows.

replace c drive
unplug data from d & e
install windows on C
once windows works again, reattach data cable and take ownership of the folders the files are in.

 

[Skywalker33]

Thanks, Colif!
The good news is Dell hardware scan of all 3 drives is negative. So no hardware issues. So I don't need to physically replace C. Is there a way to back up the data on D and E drives while the PC is turned off?
C, D and E are not encrypted. Windows 10 Pro bitlocker is not enabled. PC has password and user pin enabled.
Over 20 years ago I had to recover from a Windows 95 OS crash where the PC couldn't boot. I got cables from LapLink that enabled me to make a peer to peer connection to access and copy my hard drive files to another computer. Security was more primitive then. Is there still a solution that would let me copy the data files on D and E to another computer before I restore the OS on C?
I mainly want to recover the VMware image files so I won't need to reconstruct my VM's after I restore Windows 10 Pro OS.

 

[Skywalker33]

Oops! Just found out that Dell automatically enables bitlocker at the factory without telling its customers. And Dell doesn't keep a record of the encryption key they created without my knowledge or permission! So it looks I can't retrieve my data.

 

[Colif]

wow... thats so wrong.

thanks Dell.

 

[COLGeek]

Oops! Just found out that Dell automatically enables bitlocker at the factory without telling its customers. And Dell doesn't keep a record of the encryption key they created without my knowledge or permission! So it looks I can't retrieve my data.

How did you learn this? From what source?

 

[USAFRet]

Oops! Just found out that Dell automatically enables bitlocker at the factory without telling its customers. And Dell doesn't keep a record of the encryption key they created without my knowledge or permission! So it looks I can't retrieve my data.

Not on any consumer Dell I've ever seen.