How do I back up my hard drive?

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Notedog

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My computer crashed while watching a youtube video, and now it says that I need to reinstall windows. I need to order discs from Dell to get Windows reinstalled, but once I do, apparently I'm going to lose my everything on my hard drive. The question is, how do I back up my hard drive when all I can get in to is DOS?
 
The easiest way would be to find another working system and install the drive in it. if you've got another pc then use that one or ask a friend if you can use theirs.

Basically all you'll need to do is plug your hard drive in, if it's an IDE drive make sure you set the jumpers to the right position for the system (e.g. master or slave)
Then boot the system and hopefully, if the drive isn't completely busted yet, you'll be able to access it and copy across whatever data you need.
 
Another method is to see if your recover cds will only recovered a partition.

Then what you need to do is partition your hard drive, and then save all youe documents and your downloads on D Drive. Not C Drive.

So the next time, windows desided to die, then about the only things you need to worry about backing up is
Email
Favorites
 
Another thing you can try is doing a repair if your windows install.

Put the windows disk in, press any key to boot off it, press Enter to install windows, then press f8, THEN select your xp installation from the list that will appear and press R

This won't delete any of your data, it will just attempt to repair the windows installation. Give it a shot anyway...
 
The easiest way would be to find another working system and install the drive in it. if you've got another pc then use that one or ask a friend if you can use theirs.

Basically all you'll need to do is plug your hard drive in, if it's an IDE drive make sure you set the jumpers to the right position for the system (e.g. master or slave)
Then boot the system and hopefully, if the drive isn't completely busted yet, you'll be able to access it and copy across whatever data you need.

Problem is, it's a laptop. Will that be ok putting the laptop Hard drive in to the PC?

In any sense, what your saying I do, is put my laptop hdd in my PC, copy everything, and then put it back in my laptop, and then re-install windows, and then take the laptop hdd out and put everything back on it?
 
Yes, it's fine to put laptop hdds into pc's, if you can.

However, my second post is what I think you should try now.
What it will do is repair your Windows installation without removing/deleting any of your data. Leave your hdd in the laptop, don't change anything at all. Just put the xp disk in, and follow the steps.
 
So Dell sent me a new HDD free of charge with Windows installed on it. But I still cant get the files off my old HDD, and I really need them. Dell told me that I would be able to keep my old HDD, but now theyre saying that I need to return it to them. I took it to best buy, and they said I would have to send it to a lab to get the files. And that it would cost me 300-5,000 dollars. Is there any better alternative? They said their computer blue screened as soon as they put my hdd in one of their computers.
 
Well if you already have your new hdd I might recommending something like this.

Newegg.com - SABRENT USB-DSC5 Serial ATA (SATA) or IDE 2.5" and 3.5" to USB 2.0 Cable Converter Adapter - Adapters & Gender Changers


You can hook that up to your old hdd and drag stuff onto the computer with your new hdd. You can still use a desktop as well if you need this would prolly better so you don't have to move things twice.


But if the HDD has some sort of problem, would it work? I took it to best buy, and they said that they're computer blue screened as soon as they inserted it.
 
But if the HDD has some sort of problem, would it work? I took it to best buy, and they said that they're computer blue screened as soon as they inserted it.

It might not work what best buy did is pretty much the same thing but it can't hurt to try, depending on the data you have on there. If it will not come off by hooking it up to a different computer then your going to have to get the files taken off by a data recovery specialist. It gets pricey really fast that way.
 
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