I recently swapped my friend's old laptop's HDD for an SSD, but unfortunately, the motherboard failed. After deciding to buy her a new laptop, we connected the old HDD externally to transfer important files like photos and documents, but they aren't showing up. I've tried changing the administrator rights and watched tutorial videos on various recovery methods, but nothing seems to work. I used Disk Drill, which recovered a few photos, but not nearly enough. I'm really in a bind here—if anyone has any suggestions for how to recover these memories, I would greatly appreciate your help!
4 Answers
One thing to consider is whether BitLocker was enabled on the old laptop. If that’s the case, the drive won’t be accessible without decrypting it first. I've dealt with this before, so if it is encrypted, I can guide you on how to resolve it!
It sounds like you might be missing some partitions on the old drive. If you’re using Windows, try checking Disk Management to see if you can spot them. Sometimes only one partition shows up when there are multiple. If you’re up for it, you could explore third-party tools, though be careful—EaseUS is one common option but make sure it’s safe before using it.
If the photos are truly gone, you might want to consider taking the HDD to a professional data recovery shop. In the future, remember the 3-2-1 backup rule: keep 3 copies of your data, on 2 different types of media, and 1 in the cloud. It can save you a lot of hassle!
Thanks for the tip! I definitely should’ve backed up the files better before the swap.
First off, have you checked if your photos might be stored on OneDrive, Google Drive, or any other cloud service? Sometimes files automatically back up without us realizing it! It’s worth a peek before going deeper into recovery methods.
I think it might have been. What steps do you recommend for unencrypting it?