HP’s D: drive overwritten with pictures!

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I have a friends HP dv4, 64bit running Windows7 64bit, 4GB memory, that can’t get into Win7 on boot up. She hasn’t got much on disk except some pictures. Made a list of all installed programs to help in recovery. Best and first thought is recovery from CD’s, but she doesn’t have one. Second best is recovery from the D: partition, but that just hangs!

As I’m looking around her disk I find her pictures on the D: partition and the recovery files have been removed. She has no idea what bright light did that. In Safe Mode we can’t copy files. If I do a recovery using a Win7 recovery CD from my Win7 recovery CD, it will certainly overwrite the pictures in the D: partition on her HDD.

How can I prevent recovery from cleaning off files in her D: drive so that after Win7 is recoverd I can copy the D: partition to a thumb drive? After I copy her pictures from D:, then I can redo the recovery allowing the recovery file to be written to the D: drive.

Thanks Chris C.

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Chris,

Remove the drive & slave it to another computer as a data drive, then copy the pictures from the D: partition to the desired destination. If necessary, use Recuva or another data recovery tool to help restore the pictures.

Zig

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Zig;

Thanks for your reply.

I failed to include that the HP dv4 is a laptop. That would then require a USB adapter and then I could hook it to my own laptop. I’ve tried to get the drive out of her laptop but it’s requiring too much force which always ends up doing damage. I’ve sent an email to HP to get some info on extracting the drive

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Or if you use a LINUX distro live CD or Parted Magic utility you probably can access those files and copy them without removal of the drive.

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X2 for FUN’s suggestion, though perhaps putting the distro on a memory stck (using the iso to usb program) would be better. Either way it’s safer than removing hard disks!

Eliminate spare time: start programming PowerShell

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I use a version of Linux LiveCD or LiveDVD, boot to it with a USB Thumb/Flash drive attached and can usually get pictures, music and documents. Presently I have Linux Mint 17 Cinnamon installed on a Desktop and a Notebook as replacements for WinXP, keeps those computers serviceable. The LiveCD/LiveDVD has an install icon on their Desktop so don’t use that for simply file transfer.

Before you wonder "Am I doing things right," ask "Am I doing the right things?"

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This YT disassembly tutorial will show you how to do that (eventually :)) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IMk92LczAE

You can usually get disassembly instructions for most things from a Google.

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That video is for complete disassembly. For instructions on removing just the hard drive, see the hard drive section of the maintenance manual from HP here:
http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c01597750.pdf

Jerry

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That video is for complete disassembly. For instructions on removing just the hard drive, see the hard drive section of the maintenance manual from HP here:
http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c01597750.pdf

Jerry

I’d come across another tutorial but thought that the YT probably illustrated the same problem that Partner was and how that guy addressed it, but a full illustrated practical tutorial never goes amiss.

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So, there you are – Pages 61-62. 5 small Philips screws. Easy-peasey.

Zig

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Removing and replacing the HDD is not hard. I use an adapter kit that connects the HDD directly to another computer by USB cable or a box that accepts both 2.5″ and 3.5″ HDDs and connects to another computer by USB cable.

Before you wonder "Am I doing things right," ask "Am I doing the right things?"

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Chris,

Sounds like you need to do a Google search for a repair or upgrade manual for your laptop. I agree with Berton that either an adapter or an inexpensive external drive interface (see Newegg for these – very useful on many occasions, IMHO) is the way to go.

Zig

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Why take the laptop apart when you can do the simple thing using a memory stick with Linux, as suggested above….? It is simple, because I’ve done it!

Eliminate spare time: start programming PowerShell

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I have a friends HP dv4, 64bit running Windows7 64bit, 4GB memory, that can’t get into Win7 on boot up. She hasn’t got much on disk except some pictures. Made a list of all installed programs to help in recovery. Best and first thought is recovery from CD’s, but she doesn’t have one. Second best is recovery from the D: partition, but that just hangs!

As I’m looking around her disk I find her pictures on the D: partition and the recovery files have been removed. She has no idea what bright light did that. In Safe Mode we can’t copy files. If I do a recovery using a Win7 recovery CD from my Win7 recovery CD, it will certainly overwrite the pictures in the D: partition on her HDD.

How can I prevent recovery from cleaning off files in her D: drive so that after Win7 is recoverd I can copy the D: partition to a thumb drive? After I copy her pictures from D:, then I can redo the recovery allowing the recovery file to be written to the D: drive.

Thanks Chris C.

I am a professional computer consultant/technician.

In the case you describe I would suggest copying the desired files from the D:/ (Recovery) partition to a (preferably) USB HDD or (having adequate capacity) USB “Flash disk” (thumbdrive). You would need to boot from a suitable boot CD/DVD/USB HDD/USB thumbdrive.

Look at:
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/
for details of how to create a Win XP boot CD.

I regurlarly use a BartPE CD with Windows Commander integrated for the purpose of copying files off non-bootable Windows partitions. It is not really necessary to integrate Windows Commander, I do so because WC offers many extra features over Windows Explorer.

After you boot from such a BartPE CD you will be able to use Windows Explorer (or WC if you want to go to that trouble) to copy the files off onto some other drive.

Note that you must have any USB, etc, drives connected before you boot from the CD, otherwise it will probably not work.

There are other similar rescue CDs available for download from the Internet, but you will need to get a bit “geeky” to get them to work for you.

Otherwise, you could take the HDD out of your friend’s computer and connect it directly to a desktop PC using SATA or PATA cable then boot into Windows to copy the files.

Otherwise, you could use a SATA/PATA to USB adapter (available from sites such as: http://www.pccasegear.com/) to access the HDD via USB.

Once you have managed to back up the required files by any of the above means you could then run the “restore” disk which should have been provided with the computer when it was first supplied from HP. You would then be starting over from scratch (factory setup). Check out Win7’s “Backup and Restore” feature in Control Panel.

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