Hi, I have a slight problem and wonder if anyone here can help me. My old, or not so old computer quit working on me about 5 months ago. Before it died however it spluttered, muttered, and hissed and then crashed. Lights out! It would not start again. Problem is I was using that computer to run my Movie Magic program. Meaning I have lots of work stored on my hard drive that I do not know how to retrieve. All work was done through Microsoft Office and Movie Magic. All saved on "My Computer in documents. Also "My Pictures has ad copy photos of several books published.

Making a long story short... a friend who tried to help me out removed the old hard drive and connected it to another computer I use, but it would not boot up. No Microsoft on the drive!

I have purchased a new computer to work on and was wondering that if I take my old hard drive to a facility somewhere if there is indeed some way they can retrieve my saved files? Download them to disc for me so I can upload these files to my new computer? Or is this hard drive history?

Any help will be appreciated. Thanks. Mozelle.

Hi, Mozelle!

What do you mean by "a friend who tried to help me out removed the old hard drive and connected it to another computer", please?

It would be helpful for us to know more details about what was done concerning that.

Thanks!

Hi, thank you for response. All I know is that he removed the hard drive from the crashed computer and inserted it into a working computer of the same make and model. I think he said they had the same hook-up or something like that. However, even if it would have booted up we could not have downloaded anything from the hard drive because that computer did not have a CD burner.
He just wanted to see if the hard drive would boot up, but it did not. My friend is 49 years old and he tinkers with computers some. Meaning he is great on computers when it comes to adding features and such... he just does not know much about retrieving info from a hard drive that does not boot up. Hope this helps. Thanks. Mozelle.

Thanks!

I'm still not exactly clear as to what was done. However, the next thing that I would suggest doing would be to put the hard drive that you want to get the data from on another hard drive in another computer as a slave.

Your power supply is one possibility as to what might have gone bad on your old computer, by the way. Just a guess...

Hi, thanks again for your response. You mention slave. I think that is what he did. He laid one hard drive on top of the other hard drive and hooked up. However windows would not open. You are right when saying you suspect that it might have been electrical. I will take the hard drive to Fry's today and see what they can do. Thank you for your time. Mozelle.

Could be electrical as he suggests.