Hi everyone, first time poster and not that long a time lurker. I hve just killed my laptop, and am thankful I came across this forum and actually read stuff before I asked about the best choice between the freezer and oven trick lol

Anyhow, I managed to kill my laptop HDD - last it was working, I was transferring files to an external HDD. I had multiple file transfers happening using multiple windows. With hindsight, probably not a smart move, as, well, my laptop was no longer working the next morning. If someone has any ideas about what and how I did this, it would be much appreciated, so I make sure not to repeat it Ironically, the external HDD has also since died.

Thankfully I had a new laptop, and had already moved 95% of my files, leaving just my everyday files left, and my emails. Cost of recovery is most likely uneconomic, so until I read HDD Guru and DIY repairs lol... yeah, I was contemplating it! I will work out what the noise is, get it confirmed and if reasonable, save my pennies for a professional recovery.

That said, I have had had instances where I've had to undertake (really) basic data recovery. The extent of my experience has been using recuva, or removing hard drives and placing them into USB enclosures or adapters. While I'm not planning on becoming a data recovery expert, I would like to find out more. Apologies if these are n00b questions, this is a very new area for me.

My old laptop IDE drive had details on the label for applying jumpers to make it a master or slave drive. is there a beginner's guide to this? Tried it once, crashed my laptop, figured I was doing it wrong. Yes, there is google and youtube, but can you really believe everything you read on the internet? lol

In terms of backups, and looking for data, how do I go about finding where various file types are located? By this I mean say outlook mail, OS product keys etc. Are there any online resources that list the bulk of these, or is it a case of google-fu and list it yourself?

TL;DR - killed laptop, meh. HDD n00b Want to find out more about HDD's and where data is located.

Thanks for reading, appreciated!

The jumpers probably wouldn't be needed for the laptop.

In the old IDE days, you have cables with 2 connectors on it. the drives would need to be set to have 1 master and 1 slave. Different Motherboards were picky or not about how the master was set.. There was also a CS (cable select) jumper. Yes I also had fun with the jumpers way back.. but you can probably ignore them now.


Google-fu is your friend.

If you are talking about windows then it matters if it is XP or 7... if win7 then easy search.. type in *.pst when C drive is in explorer. learn about exporting and importing mail files.

you will find that c:\users in win 7 is same as c:\documents and settings in XP.

The windows registry holds a LOT of information. click start then run and type in regedit. you will see there is local_machine and Current_user. software settings if for all users on the machine will be in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software(vendor/software name). windows settings are in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current_version.

You can download a 3rd party util to find your product key, but it should be on the sticker of the laptop.

Really it comes down to experience, the more you do computer stuff, especially if you have a goal in mind, the more you pick up.

If you try to learn general things without a focus, it becomes either overwhelming or hard to tie it into something for retention.

I was thinking more about having a hard drive out of a laptop or pc. Done about four so far, but that was just a case of powering up a usb adapter and searching with windows explorer lol But my wife's laptop was the same as my old one. Every time I tried to power up the hdd on the adapter when connected to my laptop, it crashed my laptop, hence my asking about whether jumpers were required.



Thank you very much for your advice, much appreciated. I know what you mean about the lack of focus. On the one hand I'm trying to become prepared for similar issues in the future, but knowing what to prepare for makes things... muddy.

When you connect the HDD via a USB-IDE adapter, it will usually need to be configured as Master. The drive will most likely require a 44-pin dual-row cable (not 40-pin). Make sure not to install this cable upside down, as you will burn the drive.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Thanks for that - the adapter I have is moulded so that it can only be put on the right way round - I'll have a look for the model number tomorrow.

[Makes mental note to find some IDE HDD's for some empty enclosures too]