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new computer... need to transfer files from old corrupted harddrive

I just bought a brand new Compaq Presario computer running Windows XP media center. My old computer was continually crashing so it was time for a change. In the old computer I had a 2nd 40 GB drive that had most of the programs, music and pictures on it... but did not run the operating system. I pulled that harddrive and put it in an external case with a USB connection.... and hooked it to the new computer.

It reads the drive just fine... but the files on it are reading as corrupted or missing. The files ran just fine on the old computer (which ran regular XP). I really don't care about any of the programs.... I really just want to salvage the pictures, some documents... and the music if possible. Everything appears to be reading as corrupted.

The original computer crashed for the very last time.. as I tried to reinstall SP2 on it...after fixing some problems. That was being installed on the smaller operating system drive... so not sure how it could have corrupted the other drive.

--- the drive is FAT32

--- tried the check now but it said windows was unable to do it (is there a better way to run chkdsk on an external drive)

Thanks for any help

ded9

You can use scandisk to repair filesystem of the old drive to recove files.

if it dosent work

Use the no1 softwae in the market ontrack data recovery to recover your corrupted doc, music etc.

http://www.ontrack.com/

Reps

jonathan_schwartz

If Scandisk does not fix the drive you might also want to try SpinRite.

http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

It has save me many of times with customers bad hard drives.

Jonathan

rindi

You can use getdataback to recover your files from the disk. Don't try repairing the disk before that, as you could worsen the situation. getdataback won't write anything to the disk, it'll just scan it for your files, then lists what is recoverable, and then if you pay for the software you'll be able to copy it from the disk to your new PC.

http://runtime.org

SysExpert

The problem may also be a USB issue.

I would try to hook the drive directly into the new computer if at all possible.

Also test the USB on a second computer to see if it recognizes the files.

I hope this helps !

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Dave Lloyd

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photogmatt

ASKER

thanks for the help... I had an extra CDrom port I was able to hook it to. Everything transfered intact minus a few glitches probably caused by running chkdsk. Anyway... I guess I just had a bum Adaptec external case. Now I am wondering if it would work with a fresh formatted drive for backup.... or if I should just ditch the whole thing