Windows 10: Transferring files from Windows XP sata hard drive to Windows 10 PC

Hello,

I have an old sata internal hard drive with Windows XP installed and various files I'd like to recover. I hooked it up to my Windows 10 desktop and can view it in "This PC" but when I attempt to access it it suggests I reformat the drive. I don't actually need the drive itself, I am only interested in recovering the files on it.

Is there any way to access the files on the old hard drive without having access to Windows XP or Windows 7 machine?

Would it be possible to access the hard drive on a Windows 7 laptop with some sort of Sata to USB adapter?

I found this topic where one user said it should be as simple as just plugging it in.








Thank you!

:)

 

Retrieving Documents

Samuel, if the above did not work, your only option is to remove the hard drive and pop it into a working PC (most PC's have a spear SATA slot, if not connect your hard drive to the DVD drive cables temporarily)

Then boot the PC and in Windows File Explorer, you should be able to copy your files from the hard drive . . .

 

Windows BOOT PROBLEM

Hi good afternoon!

INFORMATION

1.- Hard drive SATA windows 10 pro (with a new clean windows installation )

2.- Hard drive SSD cloned from SATA

3.- I am using the SSD and i already have a lot of stuff installed programs and files. Which i don't want to loose (I had like a year using this clone)

4.- The SATA still Original as new no programs installed no information working perfectly.Start windows perfectly.

it still have a clean installation windows from which I made the clone to the ssd hard drive

PROBLEM

Now After a year of using this hard drive( SSD)(the cloned one). It doesn't boot no more , it just show the windows logo and the little dots start round and round and never stop.

is that any way to copy from the other hard drive (SATA) some files or folders to the damaged windows hard drive (SSD) to make it RUN or boot.(start windows).

thanks for your help!

 

Hi Technohero and welcome to Tenforums.

Yes, you should be able to hook that drive up to any system, using a SATA to USB adapter of some sort, or even plugging it inside your rig, and you should be able to do this in Windows 10. However, if the drive has some sort of damage, Windows will tell you to format it first before using it. So, is it a pretty old disk? Has it been dropped/damaged in some way?

 

Hi Simrick, thank you for the quick reply. It's been roughly 3yrs or so since the hard drive was hooked up to the Windows XP machine it belonged to. The drive was never dropped, but it has been through a couple moves and was stored somewhat carelessly, usually with the metal facing down to prevent scuffing the chip/circuitry.

 

Those errors indicate that Windows can't read the drive in its present state.

What I recommend is using a data recovery app that can read the drive without relying on the Windows filesystem to be intact. My personal preference is Active@File Recovery Pro. They have a trial version you can download and see what it finds, but you have to go online and buy a license to do any serious data recovery.

Good Luck

 

Okay, so we have some possibilities here you can try...basically try one after another to see if we can get something that will work. Sometimes the damage can be from environment, (moisture, temperature, static electricity), or even the drive just goes bad over time (things like the FileSystem/MFT go bad, etc.). So, here are some things to try:

1. If you have a desktop and extra SATA+power cables, hook it up inside your rig. If you're not able to hook it up inside a desktop, use a SATA to USB adapter or hard drive dock to hook it up. Try some recovery programs to see if the data can be recovered:

Recuva
EaseUS

2. One of our forum members has a tutorial over at our sister site, SevenForums, for reading files using Linux.

3. If it's a matter of file system damage, sometimes a "quick" format puts the disk back into a state which then can be "read" and recovered. Understand that a quick format doesn't overwrite the data on the disk, it just "releases" it as "available" for new data to be written. So, as long as nothing it written over it after the quick format, some recovery programs are then able to retrieve the data.

4. Failing these, you might want to consider Steve Gibson's SpinRite, (assuming this is a "spinner" and not a SSD). It's $89 if you've never purchased it before. This would be an alternative, or a step to try before going to "clean-room" professional recovery services, (example), which charge approximately $1-2,000, depending on the failure mode and amount of data to be recovered.

GRC

Purchase Download

SpinRite - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I've never used it personally, but it does have a good testimonials for data recovery.

Just depends how badly you need your data back. *Wink

Hope that helps. Good luck and let us know how it goes.

 

Thank you both for the suggestions and all of the info, I appreciate it!

I tried EaseUS and wasn't able to scan the old internal hard drive at all. It told me to "Make sure the hard drive is plugged in" -- which it was. But I was able to use EaseUS on an old external hard drive that at one point had back ups of most of my files I needed from the internal drive. I was able to recover what I needed, at least to some extent, from the external.

Thanks again for the help!

 

Glad to hear you got it (mostly) sorted! *Thumbs You might want to try formatting that bad drive, using "quick" format only, then see if EaseUS is able to read and recover anything. If you do, please let us know. *Smile

 

Oh my still running XP talk about a breach