If your computer has a broken screen, failed motherboard or bad power supply, the data on the hard drive is probably still OK – so you want to be able to get it copied to a new machine or another hard drive. But if the machine can’t boot, how do you get at the data?
First step is to shut the machine down and unplug it, and remove the battery if it is a laptop. Then, break out the toolkit and remove the hard drive. That’s a pretty straightforward job for a desktop or tower machine, but it can be more difficult for an all-in-one, notebook or netbook.
First go to the website of the computer manufacturer, and see if they have manuals in the Support or Downloads section. If not, Google for your machine’s model number plus “take apart”, “teardown”, “service manual” or “replace hard drive” – you will probably find step by step instructions or YouTube videos. If you have a Macintosh, go to iFixIt http://www.ifixit.com, the best collection of repair step by steps going.
Failing that, inspect your machine, on laptops there is often one or more hatch doors on the bottom. You can look carefully for symbols molded into the plastic – a symbol of a cylinder would be the mark for the hard drive hatch. Other machines will require taking the whole bottom off, or taking the keyboard out. Carefully lay out all the screws so that you can keep track of where each of them go back. You will probably need Philips (x shaped) size #0 and #00 screwdrivers, and you may need Torx (six point star) #6 or #8 drivers.
Once you have the hard drive out, there may be a caddy or bracket attached to it. Remove the caddy and keep it with the machine.
Now you can either install the drive into another machine, or better yet, use a USB external enclosure. First check whether your drive is a SATA or an IDE drive – SATA has been used for the past 5 years or so. Then, get an external drive enclosure to fit the drive – you will need to know whether it is 2.5″ (laptop) or 3.5″ (desktop) size, and whether it is IDE or SATA. The other machine should be running the same operating system as the drive you are recovering from (while it is possible to do cross-platform file recovery it has complications outside the scope of this article).
Laptop SATA 2.5"
Laptop IDE 2.5"
Once you have installed the drive and connected the enclosure to the USB port of another computer, you should be able to read the files from the hard drive.
Desktop SATA 3.5"
Desktop IDE 3.5"
If you can’t read the files on the disk, double check to see that the drive is firmly seated in the enclosure, that all cables are connected, and that the drive is spinning. If it is not spinning and it is a laptop drive, it’s possible that the USB port is not supplying enough power. Check with the enclosure’s instructions, often they come with a dual-head USB cable, to get additional power from a second USB port, plug both USB “A” connectors into your machine.
If the drive is spinning and you can’t recognize files, then you may need to repair the drive volume or catalog structure, or recover the files from the drive with recovery software.
Windows:
SpinRite http://www.grc.com/spinrite.htm
Diskinternals Partition Recovery http://www.diskinternals.com/products.shtml
OnTrack software http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.com/file-recovery-software/
Pandora Recovery http://www.pandorarecovery.com/
DataRescue PC http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue_pc.php
Recuva (free) http://www.piriform.com/recuva
Restoration (free) http://download.cnet.com/Restoration/3000-2094_4-10322950.html?tag=mncol
Recovery Review – list of recovery software http://recovery-review.com/
Mac Repair:
Apple’s DiskUtility http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1417
Alsoft DiskWarrior http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/
TechTool Pro http://www.micromat.com/
Recovery
MiniTool lMac http://mac.powerdatarecovery.com/
DataRescue http://www.prosofteng.com/
FileSalvage (Mac) http://subrosasoft.com/OSXSoftware/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=1
Article on recovery http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_recovery