Help recover corrupt hard drive

[JohnRoberts]

No...

It works as expected in my mac mini... but my old XP is old and tired.

Using control panel hardware check it found the SSD and confirmed it was working properly but i couldn't see it in my file exchange routines.

I will try the restore CD later, I have some outside work to do first,,, spring is breaking out strongly...

JR

PS: Coincidentally I have an old external hard drive that may have stopped working... I never got it to work properly with my macs, and stopped trying with the new mini. IIRC I probably copied a backup of the password file to my newer PC but that password file would be from 2018 or older.

I may see if I can get anything from the extrenal hard drive , but later... On my dead PC I have some old tax files, that hopefully I don't need, and some old password files that unfortunately I do need. When I upgraded to my new mini it didn't transfer the saved passwords from the old mini... Apparently the apple way to do that is save both mini password files to the cloud...

 

[moamps]

No...
Using control panel hardware check it found the SSD and confirmed it was working properly but i couldn't see it in my file exchange routines.
...

It should be (NTFS) formatted and set online in order to see it in windows explorer.

 

[JohnRoberts]

thanks...If I can get the old xp pc booted up and working I can copy the hard drive over to my 2015 PC... I think I already did that once a few years ago...

I don't plan to design any more new products so don't really need the old engineering software.

I have another old PC in the stable with my 3D cad programs and microchip embedding programming environment

but not for right now...

 

[Bo Deadly]

In case I haven't said it lately, computers suck (really)... The good news is my relatively new mac mini is rocking...

One very old XP PC that I use for some old excel spread sheets and some old engineering programs (Eagle PCB/schematic, Corel draw faceplate, etc). I have about 8 pages of passwords in an old excel file...

I noticed that the computer was starting to make new/bad noises. I invested into a portable SSD to grab a quick backup of that hard drive but Nooooo the old windows XP operating system did not recognize the new SSD plugged into the USB port, I was able to grab a few files plugging the SSD into my mac but it wouldn't let me grab protected files so I needed to change the permissions in the old PC... coincidentally the PC allows me to log on with a null password, has worked that way for years, but I can't log onto the old PC from another computer using the same null password.

I have been remiss about hard drive maintenance, I didn't have enough free contiguous space to efficiently defrag the drive so I tried to do it inefficiently.

That was the straw that broke the camels back, and the drive failed...

This morning I dug out my original system CD so I'll see if the RESTORE disk can restore anything.

JR

PS; Coincidentally I booted up my newest PC that I bought around 2015 but apparently haven't turned on since 2018 so it is all tangled up with microsuck handshakes that require passwords I don't remember.

See my post in the PC building thread from Ian. I would get one of those refurb machines (search "dell 3420 desktop windows ssd" on Ebay - I've seen ones for $180 shipped that would run circles around your dangerously old machines) and then plug the old drives to sata cables in the new machine if only temporarily. If you're lucky they'll mount read-only and you can still get your data off. If they're not even sata drives, you might need a probably cheap PCI adapter or USB cradle. Also see comments about creating local accounts to dodge being "captured" by MS.

 

[pvision]

I can recommend LastPass for storing passwords. It's cross-platform (can work in a browser) and there is an IOS client. The base version is free

 

[TromNek]

See my post in the PC building thread from Ian. I would get one of those refurb machines (search "dell 3420 desktop windows ssd" on Ebay - I've seen ones for $180 shipped that would run circles around your dangerously old machines) and then plug the old drives to sata cables in the new machine if only temporarily. If you're lucky they'll mount read-only and you can still get your data off. If they're not even sata drives, you might need a probably cheap PCI adapter or USB cradle. Also see comments about creating local accounts to dodge being "captured" by MS.

definitely agree on a local account (always).
I like to have a separate partition or even a separate hard drive for all my data.
I can then have open permissions on my 'data' folder therein to make sure I can access it from any operating system or user.
(I keep confidential files encrypted on that same drive)
It also makes it easy to wipe the operating system drive for a clean re-install of OS and software, because I don't need to worry about my data (since it's on another drive and has open permissions.

 

[TromNek]

I can recommend LastPass for storing passwords. It's cross-platform (can work in a browser) and there is an IOS client. The base version is free

LastPass is great. I have a family version which makes it real easy to share certain passwords.
It also has an Emergency Access feature in the event suddenly die and my family needs access to passwords that I have not shared with them.

 

[JohnRoberts]

I already have 2 1/2 old PCs , I don't need to buy another

Thanks for the advice but.....

 

[JohnRoberts]

OK I finally tried to boot up old PC #1 with the XP "restore" CD... the PC boots up, but can't find the hard drive. It says to check the cables, but I suspect it is trashed. It failed while I was trying to run a disk maintenance routine and I could hear it churning.

One possibility is to connect the hard drive to one of my other still working PCs (like #2).... If lucky it might recognize the drive as an extra hard drive... I don't feel very lucky but it would be nice to a current copy of my saved passwords excel file... I saved one copy a couple years old, on computer #3

did I mention that computers suck?

JR