Another sad tale of a lost hard drive... need help please!

[SquarePeg]

About 2 years ago my HP Pavillion DV7 started getting sickly (not starting every time I tried to boot it up). I had an external hard drive so I backed up all my pictures and documents to that. HP dies (motherboard problem according to what I was able to determine). About a month later, the external hard drive usb connection port comes loose and falls out inside the external hard drive. I put all of the equipment in a box and stuck it in a closet figuring I'd deal with it later.

Well, it's later. There is a set of pictures on that hard drive that I really need access to again. Not to mention all the pics of my daughter's first trip to Disney and first day of school etc. You know, the cute years, before they hate their parents. I have some from sharing the albums on snapfish etc. but not all.

I bought a external hard drive reader for the HP SATA drive and it came today. Pulled the HD from the HP laptop and inserted it in the reader and plugged it all into my current laptop (a Dell). I can see the drive and the users file with my name on it but when I clicked on the pictures folder it said it was empty. The properties says the folder has 32 GB of files which would be about right since they are all jpegs from my old D60. Is this a HP/Dell incompatibility thing? Is it a Windows 7/Windows 8 thing?

To make matters worse, in all my messing around trying to find the pictures, I somehow have "hidden" the Pictures folder from that drive and now can't get it back.

 

[Light Guru]

Have you tried pulling the drive out of your old external drive and connecting it to the new drive reader?

 

[SquarePeg]

Have you tried pulling the drive out of your old external drive and connecting it to the new drive reader?

It's not the same size, it's an old really big external hard drive. I took it out of the casing but I'd have to get a different type of reader. The one I have is for 2.5" & 3.5".

scratch that, it fits, didn't realize it had 2 options.

 

[fotomonkey]

So is it working now?

fwiw, if something is worth saving it's worth backing up redundantly. I use CrashPlan, an automated backup to a wifi drive, periodic manual backups, and DVD burning. In a world where two is one and one is none four has to be something.

 

[SquarePeg]

It's accessible but slooooow to open some folders. Tried to copy the whole file to my passport drive but it keeps timing out. I'll have to do it one folder at a time but it will have to wait til tomorrow, I promised to have a wii "just dance" party with my daughter tonight.

 

[fotomonkey]

Good luck. Party like it's 1999!

I keep trying to talk my son into Wii boxing but he's still smarting from the last time I kicked his butt.

 

[Ilovemycam]

About 2 years ago my HP Pavillion DV7 started getting sickly (not starting every time I tried to boot it up). I had an external hard drive so I backed up all my pictures and documents to that. HP dies (motherboard problem according to what I was able to determine). About a month later, the external hard drive usb connection port comes loose and falls out inside the external hard drive. I put all of the equipment in a box and stuck it in a closet figuring I'd deal with it later.

Well, it's later. There is a set of pictures on that hard drive that I really need access to again. Not to mention all the pics of my daughter's first trip to Disney and first day of school etc. You know, the cute years, before they hate their parents. I have some from sharing the albums on snapfish etc. but not all.

I bought a external hard drive reader for the HP SATA drive and it came today. Pulled the HD from the HP laptop and inserted it in the reader and plugged it all into my current laptop (a Dell). I can see the drive and the users file with my name on it but when I clicked on the pictures folder it said it was empty. The properties says the folder has 32 GB of files which would be about right since they are all jpegs from my old D60. Is this a HP/Dell incompatibility thing? Is it a Windows 7/Windows 8 thing?

To make matters worse, in all my messing around trying to find the pictures, I somehow have "hidden" the Pictures folder from that drive and now can't get it back.

Always keep the flash cards. At least you have the digital negs. Use them like film.

 

[SquarePeg]

To close this out - I was able to copy all of the photos from the old external hard drive to my passport external hard drive. Didn't make it in time to keep my 2014 resolution but close enough!

Still no idea why I can't access anything from the old laptop hard drive itself. I added new photos to it and can access them. I think I'm going to wipe that one and use it as a 500GB storage drive. Going to toss the older external hard drive now that I have everything copied from it as that one was extremely slow to access the files.

 

[fotomonkey]

Doesn't make sense that you can't access the old drive. As long as it's physically viable you should be able to access it from another system. I just did this with an old laptop. It gave up the ghost but I pulled the drive, threw it in an enclosure for $15, and sucked all the pertinent files off it.

If you connect it to another machine does it show up with your other drives?

 

[SquarePeg]

Doesn't make sense that you can't access the old drive. As long as it's physically viable you should be able to access it from another system. I just did this with an old laptop. It gave up the ghost but I pulled the drive, threw it in an enclosure for $15, and sucked all the pertinent files off it.

If you connect it to another machine does it show up with your other drives?

It shows up and I can access it. Yesterday I could see the Pictures folder under my user account and properties said it had 32 GB of files in that folder but when I tried to open it the file it said the folder is empty. Then I was messing around trying to figure out the problem and somehow either hid or deleted the link to that folder.

Since I was able to access the photos from the back up drive, I think I have them all saved now. Thanks for your help!

 

[fotomonkey]

Ok. Glad to hear you got them all.

 

[robbins.photo]

About 2 years ago my HP Pavillion DV7 started getting sickly (not starting every time I tried to boot it up). I had an external hard drive so I backed up all my pictures and documents to that. HP dies (motherboard problem according to what I was able to determine). About a month later, the external hard drive usb connection port comes loose and falls out inside the external hard drive. I put all of the equipment in a box and stuck it in a closet figuring I'd deal with it later.

Well, it's later. There is a set of pictures on that hard drive that I really need access to again. Not to mention all the pics of my daughter's first trip to Disney and first day of school etc. You know, the cute years, before they hate their parents. I have some from sharing the albums on snapfish etc. but not all.

I bought a external hard drive reader for the HP SATA drive and it came today. Pulled the HD from the HP laptop and inserted it in the reader and plugged it all into my current laptop (a Dell). I can see the drive and the users file with my name on it but when I clicked on the pictures folder it said it was empty. The properties says the folder has 32 GB of files which would be about right since they are all jpegs from my old D60. Is this a HP/Dell incompatibility thing? Is it a Windows 7/Windows 8 thing?

To make matters worse, in all my messing around trying to find the pictures, I somehow have "hidden" the Pictures folder from that drive and now can't get it back.

Do a google search for a freeware utility called Recuva.