I got an HP 2 years old that the hd seems to not be readable anymore. I slaved her and can see two partitions exist but cant read any data from it I can't loose my years of family photos so formatting is out of the question. Here's the kicker - second partition has the Operating system on it - as in the install dvd's so I should have made windows install dvds from it but I didn't. What to do - any ideas? Any magic software that can fix it? A buddy of mine borrowed me a USB floppy so im going to set the floppy in bios as startup drive - the floppy has software called spinrite or something like that. Anything else i should try? Thanks!
Yeah, keep the drive, build a new PC or take it to a computer repair specialist, they'll run it in windows 7 or vista Professional and then the drive will fix itself, recovery. This should allow you to lose no data. To me it sounds like its a laptop......am I right?
Is it an IDE or SATA drive? Any jumpers to change around to get it acting as a slave? Change the cable if you haven't done so already. And, if you can get a hold of one, try plugging it in to your system through a USB adapter. Spinrite will fix the drive if it can be fixed (assuming it isn't a hardware failure in the drive). But beware, it can take up to a few days to run. That's about all you can do from home. If you really want the data back, and nothing works, you can send it into one of many professional data recovery companies. It'll cost a bit, but those things really can't be replaced.
Another vote for Spinrite. Set it running in a quiet corner, and leave it alone for the day (at least). If it works, make sure you buy yourself a license
That's exactly what I did. Once I saw it worked, I bought it. Totally worth the money to have a copy around. The guy who wrote it does a podcast called Security Now which covers computer security. He's a nice guy who really knows his stuff.