HDD crash

[leo572]

I have a pentium 4 machine with 40 GB HDD. The HDD was partitioned in three parts. It worked for 3 years without any hitch. One day , while I was trying to shutdown the PC, Windows XP simply froze and I was required to switch off the computer.

Since then, windows doesnt boot. BIOS detects the HDD but XP doesnt load. It gets upto the windows loading screen and then freezes. I have now installed a new 160 GB HDD and loaded XP on it.

I tried recovering the data by making the old HDD as a slave. But the problem is as soon as I connect the HDD to the PC, windows simply freezes. I want to recover the data on the HDD. Can anyone suggest some software which doesnt require windows and can boot the PC through CD and detect the HDD and recover the data.

[eyeCpc]

The one and only Linux distribution known as Knoppix live for cd saw some good articles on just that a few years ago. Since Linux can read MS partitions while Windows can't see into Linux you can use some live for cd-r distros like Knoppix, ubuntu, and some others for rescuing files from a drive or partition when Windows can't. But the drive still has to be in working order and not see bad read/write heads or a worn bearing inside of it.

One of these articles can be reviewed at Computer First Aid Using Knoppix I keep a few burns of that distro and a few live versions around for such an occasion. At the Linux destop the drives installed on the system appear as desktop shortcuts for ready access.