My computer crashed on Friday night and it does very little other than a black screen. It will not even accept the recovery disks. Is there anyway of connecting this new machine to the old one to retrive all the data that i do not have on back up.

Cheers Carl

If the disk is OK (reasonable chance - it sounds like a PSU/motherboard problem) the disk can be plugged into another computer to get the data out - if there isn't a spare connector you can put it in place of the CDROM drive (you will probably have to switch the jumper on the back to slave)

If the disk is broken then for a big pile of cash there are specialist companies that can recover most of the data, but it usually isn't worth it for individuals.

If it doesn't spin up you have shot it. Data recovery firms charge an absolute fortune so unless your stuff is invaluable just write it off. If it's the drive you should still get something till the motherboard doesn't find an operating system.

Carl,

Connect to another PC as a slave - if DOS recognises it as a slave, back up the old data. If not... bad news, your data is practically useless. You can appoint a specialist to try to retrieve the data but it's VERY expensive (I've seen some at £180/hour) and they do not guarantee full data recovery - sorry!

Steve

Carl,

Take your HD out and fetch it round and I'll see if there's owt on it I can recover.

Pat...

I've just bought one of these things

CLICKY

Lets you plug a hard drive or CD/DVD drive into a USB socket. Seems to work very well - we use one in the office for jobs just like this. Might be an easy way to plug a suspect hard drive into a good PC.

(Only down-side - it costs < £10, but P&P is > £6 !)

David

There is also some software that will let you recover data if the drive is corrupt.

Cheers

Ian

Cheers guys

I might buy one of those David. Pat I will be in touch.

Thanks again Carl