HDD recovery problem 1

[nob1]

I've just got a DELL in for repair with a screwed OS (XP). Have been unable to recover it as the owner tried to reload windows and it all went wrong. He wants me to get some files off it before reformatting and reloading the OS. I've connected it(SATA) to another machine and although the the BIOS recognises the drive, the machine crashes with a blue screen before it should go into windows. I know DELL put a small partition on their drives could this be causing the problem? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[mainegeek]

nob1,
Can you get it to boot in safe mode?

 

[nob1]

No, it blue screens with STOP 0x0000007B (0xf789e63c, 0xc00000034,0x00000000, 0x00000000) even in safe mode!

 

[micker377]

Are you installing the drive as master, or slave in "another computer? Install it as slave and copy/backup any info you need. XP won't install on one machine, and work on a different machine (driver conflicts and such).

 

[nob1]

It's a serial drive - there is no master/slave with SATA drives. I'm connecting it to a machine that is already running XP on it's own SATA drive. I'm not trying to boot from the faulty drive.

 

[wolluf]

Have you got/could you buy a SATA usb enclosure and see if you can attach the drive as an external?

 

[nob1]

At the moment it is connected to a spare SATA connector on the motherboard. Wouldn't connecting via USB be pretty much the same thing? I haven't got a usb connected enclosure but I could get hold of one. What difference would it make?

 

[YoWill]

Can data be recovered from a hard drive after it has been reformatted?

 

[nob1]

Sorry about the delay. I finaly got a disk enclosure for the SATA drive connected via USB. Worked great. Got all the data back with no trouble. Thanks for all the help.
External enclosures are great.