Hard Drive Crashed

[KRJ4]

My hard drive crashed, but I have gotten a new one replaced by Dell. My boyfriend has tried to recover my pics, which is all I really want from the old hard drive, but we cannot get it to work! We need some help. I called Dell tech support and they had us run tests and they decided that I needed a new hard drive, unfortunately they never told us what the problem was exactly. When I reboot the computer it will act like it is loading and then get to a black screen and have a gray scale which will get to the first 5 or 6 bars and then stop loading and freeze. My question is, can anyone tell me if I can recover my photos from my old hard drive and if so, HOW??? Anything will help, just please give some suggestions so that I do not have to take it to a computer store to get fixed cause thats quite pricey from what I hear.
Thanks
KRJ4

[GDH]

Connect the problem hard drive as the secondary drive on your PC.

Boot the PC and you may find that the computer recognises the second drive attached and you can read your files.

If not, download Recover My Files from www.recovermyfiles.com and install it on your new booting drive. Now run it over the problem drive. If you cannot see a drive letter, start by using the Format Recover options. Then try a Complete File Search for your photos.

If you cannot see the drive as a drive letter, search the "physical drive" (the booting drive is usually physical drive 0, and the second drive is usually physical drive 1).

[mrblack]

how do you boot it over the corrupt drive? do you put the bad drive into the new functioning computer? i have this same problem, and a technician was saying that since a clean computer can not read it it is pointless trying to recover files through programs and the best alternative is sending it to techniccians that can perform under a "clean" room.

can a virus completely make a hardrive uncapable of fully functioning again? He also recommened that I buy a new hard drive, but he is willing to recover my files.

[KRJ4]

We cannot get the computer to recognize the hard drive at all, but I will try the other suggestion and see if that works
. How much did that technician say it would cost to do that?

[mrblack]

150$ not bad

[GDH]

Yes, put the problem hard drive into the good computer as the secondary drive (you need some knowledge to do this but there is plenty of information on the web about connecting a second drive).

Once it is connected, boot the computer normally via the good booting drive. You will probably not see the problem drive as a drive letter on your system. However, when you run Recover My Files look for the "Physical Drive" in the selection list (the second drive is usually "physical drive 1").

It is only when you have physical drive problems that you need to send the drive away (eg. circuit board is dead, the platters no longer spin etc.). If the drive is spinning then it should be able to be solved with a software solution. We sell a lot of software to data recovery companies .