HDD Problems

[bentobaku]

Guy i was sent a pc that has an unmountable boot volume. It is a sata II drive, when i run HDD test on it, they come back pass. There is definately a problem with it though. Windows will start to boot but when it should enter the welcome screen it crashes.

My main question here is....
Is it possible to get info off the drive

When i try loading mini-xp or something like that, it finds the drive but will not open it to explore. I can get reading of the size of the disk, brand all that, but i cant view a directory.

The owners just want family photos off the drive. I am out of ideas so i figured i would bring it here and see if someone had a better one.

 

[DBB2010]

i would try a different PE disc like hiren's, ubcd or ubuntu. probably hiren's first.

 

[bentobaku]

I used hiren's and that is where i got the mini-xp, i dont know what other program to try

 

[DBB2010]

well if the hdd is damaged, it'll have to be replaced anyway.
you can install windows on the new drive and then use hiren's to make a ghost image from the old drive and extract what is needed or just hook the old drive up and pull data off file by file.

 

[DBB2010]

or run ghost from hiren's with the option of breaking the files up into cd or dvd sized increments and burn like that, straight from ghost.