My computer crashed!! I'm going crazy!!!

[anne]

Sorry to hear that you have lost some of your files, I am like you, I start out with the intention of backing every thing up ........... but never get arond to it,must go out tomorrow and buy a stack of disc's.

[MinelabMan]

How do you know it's toast? If it's not the hard drive, you may be able to get a hard drive enclosure and access your files from another computer, even if it is the hard drive you may still be able to, Or like BDA said, there's data reclaimation services that may be able to help you.

Also if it is the hard drive and the computer is in relatively good condition, installing a new hard drive is a simple and inexpensive repair. If you have an extra bay available, you can get 2 hard drives, the second to use as a back up, alot easier than backing up to cd's or dvd's. Or you can buy an external hard drive that plugs into a usb, firewire or eSata port depending on what you computer has.

I wouldn't give up yet.

[tincan]

here is what you need:
Sabrent USB 2.0 to IDESATA Cable for 2.5-Inch 3.5-Inch 5.25-Inch Drive with Power Adapter USB-DSC5 at TigerDirect.com

I work in the IT dept. at a university and we do this almost daily.
you will have to remove the hard drive from the "bad" computer and use this cord to hook the hard drive to another "good" computer. This will allow you to access all of the files that you saved on the drive, as long as the hard drive is still good. Which it probably is. If you take it to a computer store to recover your files this is what they do and charge you for. After backing up the files from the hard drive on the "good" computer, then I would put the drive back in the computer it came from and re-install windows on it.

[anne]

Originally Posted by tincan

here is what you need:
Sabrent USB 2.0 to IDESATA Cable for 2.5-Inch 3.5-Inch 5.25-Inch Drive with Power Adapter USB-DSC5 at TigerDirect.com

I work in the IT dept. at a university and we do this almost daily.
you will have to remove the hard drive from the "bad" computer and use this cord to hook the hard drive to another "good" computer. This will allow you to access all of the files that you saved on the drive, as long as the hard drive is still good. Which it probably is. If you take it to a computer store to recover your files this is what they do and charge you for. After backing up the files from the hard drive on the "good" computer, then I would put the drive back in the computer it came from and re-install windows on it.

That sounds straight forward dosen't it Donna.........

[DonnaM]

Thanks! I have a friend who is going to look at the computer for me one day this week and make sure but he tells me that from my description of what happened, the hard drive is probably bad. He walked me through some steps to get it going again before he came to that conclusion. We'll see for sure later this week.

[prizm-pal]

Good luck Donna... I am as lost as you are with such things... but I have brother who only works with computers and he totaly debuged mine yesterday..I had so much bagage he wondered how I was able to do anything...hope you get it figured out!

[EBCIII]

So sorry to hear this Donna. I just got a new one. The prices for them now days is pretty cheap, but all the info you lost is almost impossible to replace.

I wish you well in your effort to retrieve it, Beale.

[DonnaM]

Thanks guys. My friend has already offered to put in a new hard drive for me if that's the problem. I'm blessed. I wish I was more knowledgeable on such things myself.