This is regarding my hp g60 230us laptop. after being connected and disconnected to a friends USB / msd, i started to get a BSOD, and windows would not boot. The laptop shipped with win vista
home premium 32bit. I had upgraded and was using windows 7, to correct a manufacturing flaw in the sound drivers, as i use the laptop for live music performance and writing for a period when i did not own a desktop. That being said, there was months worth of work done on musical tracks that cannot be re-produced without the original files from my DAW (digital audio workstation). My DAW
is Cubase 5. So, i opted to downgrade to vista home premium again, with the option to not overwrite my files and hopefully recover them from the old partition (windows.old).
There was about 250g of files and info total on the 300g drive, most of which i was able to recover....except for the most important files of all, my Cubase files, and the audio files that are in their
respective project folders.

Occasionally while attempting to copy an item from the old partition to the new partition i would get the I/O error. When researching this phenomenon most of the information and help i ran across implied problems with copying / pasting from a usb drive to a hdd, however, i was getting this error from the hdd itself, whilst copying from old to new partition. I went as far as re-intalling the firmware for the drive, etc, and still cannot recover this last bit of data, THE MOST IMPORTANT DATA. I tried using a USB device to copy to, no luck. I have not deleted the folders containing my old files in the hopes that there is some way to recover them, i am a live performance dj, and i need the files to complete tracks that will be played at festivals and party's alike for all of 2011:(

Here is the really curious thing about the folder info inside the "windows.old" folder. When i right click on the remaining folders and look at their properties, it says the folder is empty, and that it's size is 0mb. Forgive me if i do not believe the machine. I obviously cannot open the folders either, as i get the same I/O error.

Anyone with any knowledge on this subject or has personally run into this problem....any advice would be appreciated, without those files (about 7 months of work), im dead in the water and have to start from scratch, which i honestly do not want to do as they were some of the best tracks ive ever written and as said before, cannot be reproduced.

thanks in advance to anyone replying to this topic!!!!

Hi, Really you have made a serious mistake of installing a new os on what appears to be a failing drive (maybe some bad sectors?) and worse still you expect to recover data from the reinstalled drive.

Yes I have seen this before........the empty folders in the windows.old directory.

Now the important bit!
To have any chance of getting your precious files back you MUST STOP using the drive. You have to find another pc to mount the drive and then scan for the files to recover them. It is possible to mount the drive externally through the usb port but it would be better to connect the drive directly to a motherboard.

I suggest you download Dmde GUI from here: and use it to browse the drive see if the files are still available to you. This demo allows recovery of single files at a time. There are also options to fully scan the drive and then search for known file extentions etc. Also another bit of advice would be to create a complete image of the hard drive to another. This would allow all work to be carried out on the image.

If this appears to be too much for you then you could find a pro to do the job for you. It wouldn't cost much.

is it possible, as you say, to mount a laptop hdd to a desktop motherboard? and if not, how do you mount a laptop hdd via usb? sry im just curious, ive never heard of that, is there an adapter
involved?

i will try the software you recommended, but if you can answer the above questions i would be grateful.

Yes- an inexpensive adapter- here is a sample:
http://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-USB-DSC5- ... B000HJ99DI

Thx so much! i will give that a try:)