Computer expert needed

[rodster]

My W7 laptop died, I pulled the hard drive and connected it to my new W10 laptop with a USB SATA cable and the drive doesn't show up.

The cable is new and I don't have another SATA drive to test it.

Under Computer Management it shows the disk to be dynamic and invalid. It was partitioned in the W7 laptop.

I found a open source program called Testdisk that looks like it might help recover the data but it also looks like it will convert the disk from dynamic to basic which can mean losing data.


If I get a working laptop, what are the chances I can just plug in the hard drive and boot it up?

Thanks for any suggestions.

[stangPlus2Birds]

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...2-bb9e66dcf2fd

https://mypkb.wordpress.com/2007/03/...o-basic-disks/
=====
TestDisk 6.6 will allow to backup your data and, if you let it rewrite the partition structure, it will convert your dynamic disk to a basic disk without touching the data.
=====


If the data on the disk is worth anything, then get another usb-to-sata cable and a cheap SSD, and do a disk copy/clone.
Then, do the dynamic to basic conversion on the cloned disk.
If the data isn't worth that ~$50 to ~$100, then it's up to you.



[On Soap Box]
Imho, external hard drives are dirt cheap. They should be used religiously for any data that has any value at all.
And yes, I do mean dirt cheap. Compare how much you spend for expensive cell phone service, cable bill, weekly gasoline, etc.

For very critical important data, use AWS (Amazon Web Service/Storage) - period.
Cost for 100GB/month of storage is currently ~$2.30/month.
Also, AWS has S3 Glacier Deep Archive - For long-term data archiving that is accessed once or twice in a year and can be restored within 12 hours.
The current pricing is ~$1/month for 1TB. That may be good for super important videos (kid's first steps, wedding, etc).
https://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/

Fwiw, Amazon Web Services "carried" the Amazon product selling division for well over a decade.
I forget how long I've used AWS for critical storage. Over 20 years??

Good Luck!

[rodster]

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...2-bb9e66dcf2fd

https://mypkb.wordpress.com/2007/03/...o-basic-disks/
=====
TestDisk 6.6 will allow to backup your data and, if you let it rewrite the partition structure, it will convert your dynamic disk to a basic disk without touching the data.
=====


If the data on the disk is worth anything, then get another usb-to-sata cable and a cheap SSD, and do a disk copy/clone.
Then, do the dynamic to basic conversion on the cloned disk.
If the data isn't worth that ~$50 to ~$100, then it's up to you.



[On Soap Box]
Imho, external hard drives are dirt cheap. They should be used religiously for any data that has any value at all.
And yes, I do mean dirt cheap. Compare how much you spend for expensive cell phone service, cable bill, weekly gasoline, etc.

For very critical important data, use AWS (Amazon Web Service/Storage) - period.
Cost for 100GB/month of storage is currently ~$2.30/month.
Also, AWS has S3 Glacier Deep Archive - For long-term data archiving that is accessed once or twice in a year and can be restored within 12 hours.
The current pricing is ~$1/month for 1TB. That may be good for super important videos (kid's first steps, wedding, etc).
https://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/

Fwiw, Amazon Web Services "carried" the Amazon product selling division for well over a decade.
I forget how long I've used AWS for critical storage. Over 20 years??

Good Luck!

Thanks for the advice. I ended up using Testdisk on my original disk taking a chance without cloning it first. Fortunately Testdisk was able to access all of my data and I was able to copy it to a new external hard drive.

I hear you on backing up and I have backups of backups. Unfortunately I wasn't very diligent doing the backups so there was data I would have lost due to not doing timely backups.

I see my new W10 machine has a backup feature in the settings. I have a new 1TB WD external drive connected and set up to back up new files daily. Not sure if it's working but I will watch to see what is getting backed up. If it works I should no longer have to remember to back up manually.