Hi I'm not looking for a tradesperson here just advice which would be appreciated.
Our pc of 5 years seems to have died. It won't boot up ,not even from the system recovery disk as there is an error message. Advice so far is that the hard disk must be either full or corrupt and may just be worn out. Apparently we were probably pushing it to expect a 5 year life so we should probably have anticipated this and got a new one way before now!
All we'd like to do now is to somehow get all our information and photos off the pc before resigning it to the dustbin. If anyone has any suggestions about how to do that or knows a man who can, it would be appreciated.if you could let me know. Thanks

The hard drive would first need to be removed from the PC and tested with another machine to see if it still works mechanically. If so, there's a good chance that your files can be recovered.

Even if it doesnt work, there is still a chance that the data can be recovered from it.

However, data recovery services are expensive. I would take admin's advice in the first instance - all you need is someone who is not too scared to take the cover off their PC (and yours) and install your hard drive on their computer. Its not that difficult (google might be able to help), but it can be a little intimidating. If you want to try, there are two plugs, a skinny one on the end of a grey cable and a thicker one on the end of a (usually) black cable. One is for data and the other is for power. Do all this with the wall power off.

There is a new PC repair shop/internet cafe on Dartmouth Rd on the opposite side to the old post office before question bar that might be able to help.

Hi Roz

A five year life isn't particularly over optimistic for a hard disk, particularly one in a home PC which probably hasn't been worked that hard. Of course one should always backup key data

Although you say there is an error message, you don't say what the actual error is that leads you to suspect the hard drive. I assume we are talking about a desktop PC (which is probably a 3.5" IDE drive at that vintage) as opposed to a laptop.

The easiest thing to do would be to get it out of the machine and connect it via USB to another PC to see if the contents are readable. You would need an external caddy for this though these are pretty cheap or you may find someone who has one. Something like this

http://www.storagedepot.co.uk/Hard-Drive...4/p88.aspx


If the disk can't be read in that way, it is probably uneconomic to consider any form of recovery. Feel free to send me a private message if you have questions. I am not particularly a hardware specialist but I have worked in IT long enough not to be scared to poke inside the box a little bit.

Dear all,thanks for all the advice. Now typing this on a borrowed laptop. We have put our lives in the hands of PC world; lets see how they do. Many thanks!