How to Recover Files from Your Dead Computer Hard Drive

A few months ago my computer's hard drive began having problems. It started with loud buzzing noises and vibrations, and soon my computer could no longer boot-up. Like many of us, I didn't have a backup for my files, for I had never needed one before. Understandably, I was very concerned about losing all of the music, pictures, and documents that I had accumulated over the three year life of my laptop.

With my hard drive inoperable, my computer-inclined roommate suggested I buy a new hard drive, get my computer back up and running, then plug the old drive in as a mass storage device and pull the files I needed off the barely working drive. The idea was that the drive still might work well enough to pull data from, even though it was obviously not well enough to boot from. So we did that and to my surprise, we were able to recover a small amount of the data before the hard drive conked-out for what appeared to be the last time. The problem was, I still had pictures and music and documents on the drive that I hadn't been able to get to, and I was left very frustrated.

In despair, I searched the internet for methods of "fixing" my hard drive temporarily so that I might be able to get those last few files off. What I found was a website called free-backup.info. On the site was an article titled "Diy Hard Drive Recovery for the Extremely Desperate", authored by Andrew Whitehead. The article provided step-by-step instructions for taking apart the hard drive and getting it working long enough to retrieve the needed files. The site emphasized that this method was only a last resort, and only for drives that would otherwise be discarded for being completely "dead." My hard drive fit the bill, and I figured it was at least worth a try. But with a short supply of time, I decided to put the old hard drive in my desk drawer to save for a day when I had nothing better to do.