Mesei Loc: Dallas

Hello folks. I am new to UHH and I have a predicament. I have several hundred pictures on an older Gateway laptop that will not boot up. Does anybody know how I might be able to get these off of this hard drive, even if the hard drive may be failed? I don't know much at all about computers and would appreciate any help. Thanks in advance.

jimni2001 Loc: Sierra Vista, Arizona, USA

Take the hard drive to Office Depot. If they can retrieve them they will charge you $50 if not there is no charge. If you have to have them retrieved by changing the disc out then the charge is $700 to $2700 dollars. I just went through the same thing and lucked out. I went to radio shack and they have a device that will turn the hard drive into an external hard drive and it cost about $30. It worked for me even though the hard drive was failing. I had to try 30 or 40 times to get it to work but it eventually did but. It took me almost three weeks to retrieve the 30,000+ photos that I almost lost but I did get them back. Good luck.

DB Loc: Myrtle Beach, SC

I truly hope someone can retrieve them for you. The Digital Age is amazing but this is a good reminder to always BACK UP BACK UP BACK UP......eventually all media will fail one day...

rebride

You might try an external docking station or hard drive enclosure. You have to take out the hard drive from the computer to use them. You will also have to match the type of hard drive.
Here's a link to Newegg;
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&N=-1&isNodeId=1&Description=esata+docking+station
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&N=-1&isNodeId=1&Description=external+hard+drive+enclosure&x=19&y=16

Moray Loc: East Coast Canada

If you link up the hard drive and it comes up corrupt, you can still download free software to retrieve them. I went through this with a crorupt drive and I have a sd card I will be doing.

marcomarks Loc: Ft. Myers, FL

A competent repair department can boot up your computer from a CD and may be able to extract the photos from the hard drive for you onto an external drive if the hard drive hasn't PHYSICALLY failed and won't spin or the read/write head is bad. Many times it's a File Allocation Table (FAT) problem so that your files are still there but the computer can't find them because it's searching aimlessly without a "table of contents" to know where stuff is. Same way with the inability to boot up. You may have corrupted files in the operating system or the FAT is corrupted so the computer can't find the operating system files it is looking for.

In any case, after the photo files are extracted, if they can do it, don't ever use that hard drive again. Either get a new drive or use the whole Gateway for a boat anchor.

EstherP

If the HD is taken out of the laptop it is likely possible to hook it up to another computer (like an external HD) and retrieve the photos that way.
But where are your back-ups???
If you don't have your photos backed up, before you do anything else, invest in two external hard drives and back up all your photos - make one external a copy of the other, update both regularly, and keep them in separate places (one at the office, one at your son's, and the photos on your HD at home).
Remember, it is not a question of IF a HD will fail, but WHEN! Or any other part of your computer that will prevent access to what's on the HD.
EstherP

ggttc Loc: TN

Does it boot at all...or are you getting a blue screen as soon as it starts to spin the hard drive?

I also hard a Gateway fail...but it was a motherboard failure.

Do you get any type of prompts at all? Or just a blue screen that comes on for a few seconds and goes black?

SpeedyWilson Loc: Upstate South Carolina

Hopefully the solution will be very simple, and inexpensive.

Take the hard drive out of your computer. Now take it (or the whole computer) to a local computer repair shop (check the phone book or internet) and ask them to hook it up and determine if the photos can be accessed. Get a price quote first. They should be able to let you know within a few minutes. After that they can tell you your options.

One option, if the drive is good, will be to just buy a hard drive enclosure unit. You can get one starting at around $15. You'll need to determine the right size and whether it is SATA, etc. Then just insert your old drive into the enclosure, connect to an electric outlet, plug the enclosure into a USB port on your good computer, and then access everything that's on the old drive. When you access the upper left hand "Computer" icon on your desktop, you will see the enclosure listed as an additional drive, probably "E" or "F." Be sure the "on/off" switch is in the "On" position. When you don't need the drive you can turn it "Off."

The best place to buy the enclosures is online, unless you have a good computer supply store locally. The local shops will only have a few choices, probably in the $50 or above range. I paid $20 for my enclosure, and it's been working great for a couple of years. I use it as a backup now.

Here is one site, with some possibilities:
http://www.newegg.com/External-Enclosures/SubCategory/ID-92

This video (or one of the others) might be helpful:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HwTmevglkM

Mesei Loc: Dallas

Thank you all for the great suggestions. I will definitely be backing up everything from now on.