windows 7 - 3 OS computer, Hard Drives Corrupted, Any way to save the data?

07
2014-07
  • Sean

    I have a computer. Its a pretty amazing computer. I built it myself. It has 3 500gb hard drives in it, all with different OS's: XP, Vista, and 7.

    Some how, it seems ALL 3 have gotten corrupted. one day I turned on my computer, I booted up XP. It gets to the loading screen, then BAM! a crash screen flashes on the screen (a 0x00000007 code) it automatically resets after that, so... logically, since that one stopped working, I figured I'd try getting booting Windows 7.

    Windows 7 gets stuck on Startup Repair. And of course startup repair is unproductive and cannot find any problems. So I opened the command prompt and perform a disk check. It FINDS NO ERRORS! WTF right? So I try vista next and it won't even start because it says kdcom.dll is missing or corrupt.

    What is really funny about all this is with Windows 7 and XP SOMETIMES it actually manages to pass the loading screens and I can use them like I normally would.

    I'm pretty sure my data is safe because sometimes I can still access it. Is there anyway I could save the data, because I have like 400gb of data. After the problem started I moved all the collective data from all the hard drives onto the windows 7 hard drive, because that is the one that actually works most often.

    So could I take that hard drive out and put it in one of those cases that allows you to connect it to another computer through USB, and transfer all the data there, or get a nice big external hard drive and pull the data off that way?

    I realize that I'm gonna have to wipe the hard drives and reinstall windows on all of them. I just want to be able to put all my data back after doing that.

    • Answers
  • RedGrittyBrick

    The chances of three drives failing simultaneously are very small. More likely you have a hardware failure elsewhere, perhaps in the disk controller, perhaps in memory, perhaps elsewhere on the motherboard.

    I have an IDE/SATA to USB adapter I use to test drives on other computers, to migrate data etc, I would check the drives on another computer and run diagnostics on the faulty PC.

  • Velociraptors

    Yes, you can use a hard drive enclosure to connect your drives to a different computer to copy your data to a new location. You can also use an Ubuntu live CD or flash drive (or other Linux distro if you prefer) to boot your computer and copy your data that way.


    • Related Question

    security - How can I access data on my Vista hard drive if the computer crashes?
  • Edward Tanguay

    Every couple years I get a new computer with a new hard drive and then just connect the original hard drive as the second one so I have access to all of my data in case I forgot to back something up.

    This worked well with XP but with Vista, I recall this didn't work, there was some kind of security error when I tried to access the data on the drive from a fresh system.

    So now I've got a computer with Vista running on a 250GB hard drive.

    I regularly back up my most important data, but how can I be sure that if my computer suddenly crashes (currently having problems with my CPU/heatsink/fan), that I have access the data that is on the drive. Is there something I can do, e.g. create some backdoor password, so that I can access the data on this drive by plugging it into another computer as a slave drive?


    • Related Answers
  • Ivo Flipse

    I used a Ubuntu Live CD to get access to the drive without too much trouble, you would need a secondary/external hard disk to copy your files to.

    The only problem you could have is mounting NTFS disks in Ubuntu (don't ask me!) and getting access to password protected files, but as long as you don't stick important stuff in folders with Windows restricted access it shouldn't be a problem

    Edit: NTFS support should be fine in Ubuntu these days

    Anyone with more specific Live CD experients, go ahead an edit my post.

  • John T

    As long as it isn't the hard drive that crashes, you can swap it into another PC just fine as a slave and browse it regularly. However, it is always better to be safe and keep a second backup elsewhere of your data. An external hard drive is a great investment for things like this, you could even mirror your current setup onto a cheap internal disk and store it somewhere.

  • LachlanG

    The security error you hit when putting your old drive in your Vista PC was probably due to NTFS access permissions. If the drive physically is in your computer though and you're an administrator you can override any permissions.

    With the old drive inside your new computer

    1. right click on the old drive in Windows Explorer,
    2. then click Properties,
    3. Security,
    4. Advanced,
    5. Owner
    6. Edit (if Vista, not necessary for WinXP)
    7. Select your username,
    8. check "Replace owner on subcontainers and objects",
    9. then click OK,
    10. Click OK again,
    11. Click OK one last time.

    You should then be able to access the files on the old drive.