Hey everyone! My parents' old HP computer, which they upgraded to Windows 10, recently died. I'm trying to help them out. Initially, I was met with a black screen with a blinking cursor when trying to boot it up. Luckily, I was able to access recovery mode, and my plan is to save their files before reinstalling Windows. However, I've hit a snag. The computer is detecting my 1TB external HDD as drive I:, but I can't click 'next' to proceed with saving their files. I've formatted the external drive to NTFS and made sure it's empty. Is there a trick to getting the recovery mode to accept the external HDD for saving files? Any help would be greatly appreciated!
1 Answer
Definitely try using an external drive enclosure! Since the old HP is likely using a SATA drive, you can get a SATA to USB enclosure with a power supply for a 3.5" drive. This way, you can connect it to another computer and transfer files. Alternatively, using a USB stick to boot a Linux OS could also work, allowing you to access the old computer’s storage and move files onto your external HDD.
That's a solid plan! Just a heads up though, if you go the Linux route, make sure it can handle any BitLocker encryption if it’s enabled on the drive.