3 Easy Ways to Recover your Data
The scenario: You turn your computer on and for whatever reason Windows can't boot to a usable desktop environment. Let's assume that you've tried everything in the book to make it bootable: you've tried a Windows repair or reinstallation, for example, and no joy. Now you're faced with the prospect of doing a bare-metal reinstallation or restore, wiping the hard drive clean and reloading everything. However, you have a lot of data on the hard drive and don't want to lose it.
Now, so long as your inability to boot Windows isn't caused by a mechanical hard drive failure, this should be very doable. And there are few common ways of recovering your data.
Method One – Data Recovery Boot Disk
My first choice is to attach an external USB hard drive to the computer in question and then boot the computer with a recovery boot disk. There are many options here. There are several flavors of Linux boot CD's that will do the trick. There are also several Windows-based boot CD's. I normally use a Reatogo-X-PE boot disk (just Google "Reatogo" and you'll find the website easily enough). Basically you boot your computer with this recovery CD, which then loads a mini version of Windows XP, bypassing the corrupt operating system. It allows you, among other things, to access your data from its own desktop environment. In the process you can copy over your data to an external hard drive.
You'll need to download the installation package from the Reatogo website, and you'll also need a working Windows XP CD-ROM. The whole process is fairly straight-forward, just follow the prompts. The end result is an ISO image you can burn to a CD-R.
One thing I really like about Reatogo is the relative ease of adding special drivers to your custom boot disk, like mass storage drivers for RAID cards.
The main reason this is my personal favorite method is that I do a lot of basic data recovery for customers and this method does not require that I physically remove the hard drive from the computer. It saves me time and effort.
Method Two – External USB Hard Drive Enclosure
Basically, with this method you physically remove the hard drive from the problem computer and install it into an external hard drive enclosure. Then you attach the external hard drive enclosure to another healthy computer and recover the data to a backup folder on the healthy computer's hard drive.
The downside of this method is that, obviously, you must have an external hard drive enclosure or be willing to buy one that is compatible with the problem hard drive, both in form factor and interface: 2.5 inch or 3.5 inch, SATA or PATA.
An interesting alternative to the external hard drive enclosure are USB hard drive docking stations for SATA hard drives. This is more convenient because you don't have to install the problem hard drive into an enclosure. You simply "dock" the problem hard drive into the docking station, which is attached via USB to another healthy computer. This works especially well for desktops with no video or laptops with no video or broken LCD screens, where a boot disk wouldn't work because, well, you can't see what you need to back up.
Method Three – Attaching the problem hard drive internally to another healthy computer.
With this method you physically remove the problem hard drive from its original computer and install it into another healthy computer. In the "olden days," before the advent of USB external hard drives, this was nearly always the method for data recovery. And, as cumbersome as it was, it worked quite well, so long as you remembered to set the master/slave jumpers properly. I still use this method occasionally. There are definite drawbacks. One is that the host computer needs to have enough and the proper connections (IDE or SATA data and power connections) to accommodate a second hard drive. Many computers, especially small form-factor computers, do not. Also, if you are trying to attach a 2.5 inch IDE/PATA laptop hard drive to a regular desktop computer, you'll need an adapter to do so.
These are a few of the most common methods for recovering data from an unbootable Windows environment.
Now, so long as your inability to boot Windows isn't caused by a mechanical hard drive failure, this should be very doable. And there are few common ways of recovering your data.
Method One – Data Recovery Boot Disk
My first choice is to attach an external USB hard drive to the computer in question and then boot the computer with a recovery boot disk. There are many options here. There are several flavors of Linux boot CD's that will do the trick. There are also several Windows-based boot CD's. I normally use a Reatogo-X-PE boot disk (just Google "Reatogo" and you'll find the website easily enough). Basically you boot your computer with this recovery CD, which then loads a mini version of Windows XP, bypassing the corrupt operating system. It allows you, among other things, to access your data from its own desktop environment. In the process you can copy over your data to an external hard drive.
You'll need to download the installation package from the Reatogo website, and you'll also need a working Windows XP CD-ROM. The whole process is fairly straight-forward, just follow the prompts. The end result is an ISO image you can burn to a CD-R.
One thing I really like about Reatogo is the relative ease of adding special drivers to your custom boot disk, like mass storage drivers for RAID cards.
The main reason this is my personal favorite method is that I do a lot of basic data recovery for customers and this method does not require that I physically remove the hard drive from the computer. It saves me time and effort.
Method Two – External USB Hard Drive Enclosure
Basically, with this method you physically remove the hard drive from the problem computer and install it into an external hard drive enclosure. Then you attach the external hard drive enclosure to another healthy computer and recover the data to a backup folder on the healthy computer's hard drive.
The downside of this method is that, obviously, you must have an external hard drive enclosure or be willing to buy one that is compatible with the problem hard drive, both in form factor and interface: 2.5 inch or 3.5 inch, SATA or PATA.
An interesting alternative to the external hard drive enclosure are USB hard drive docking stations for SATA hard drives. This is more convenient because you don't have to install the problem hard drive into an enclosure. You simply "dock" the problem hard drive into the docking station, which is attached via USB to another healthy computer. This works especially well for desktops with no video or laptops with no video or broken LCD screens, where a boot disk wouldn't work because, well, you can't see what you need to back up.
Method Three – Attaching the problem hard drive internally to another healthy computer.
With this method you physically remove the problem hard drive from its original computer and install it into another healthy computer. In the "olden days," before the advent of USB external hard drives, this was nearly always the method for data recovery. And, as cumbersome as it was, it worked quite well, so long as you remembered to set the master/slave jumpers properly. I still use this method occasionally. There are definite drawbacks. One is that the host computer needs to have enough and the proper connections (IDE or SATA data and power connections) to accommodate a second hard drive. Many computers, especially small form-factor computers, do not. Also, if you are trying to attach a 2.5 inch IDE/PATA laptop hard drive to a regular desktop computer, you'll need an adapter to do so.
These are a few of the most common methods for recovering data from an unbootable Windows environment.
Source...