I'm trying to rescue some files from my parents' old HP computer that recently stopped working. It was already upgraded to Windows 10 but has been really slow. Now, when I boot it up, I just see a black screen with a white dash. I've accessed recovery mode and want to back up their files before reinstalling Windows. Unfortunately, they never backed up their data or kept the recovery partition, and the SSD is nearly full. When I try to save over 390GB of files to an external 1TB HDD that I've formatted to NTFS, the recovery tool detects it but won't let me select it to proceed. Any ideas on how to solve this issue?
3 Answers
One way to get around this is to use an external drive enclosure. Just make sure not to write anything to the original disk. I’d recommend trying a program like DiskDrill to recover the files, but honestly, there are easier methods if the file system isn't completely wiped.
Hey, a quick note on that Linux USB option! If the original drive is BitLocker encrypted, you might run into issues accessing those files with Linux. I’ve had that happen when trying to access Windows partitions while using a Linux distro.
I think using an external drive enclosure is your best bet. If the computer is under 20 years old, it's likely a SATA drive. If it's a desktop version, you might need a SATA to USB enclosure with a power supply for it to work. Alternatively, you could boot from a Linux USB stick, which should allow you to access the files and transfer them to an external drive. It’s a bit more hands-on, but it works well for these kinds of situations!
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