Hard Drive Problems - need advice

---

Hi:
My 12 year old desktop computer crashed. I had two hard drives installed on the computer; one for the OS and one for the data. I removed the 2 T hard (data) drive and placed it in a hard drive docking station connected to a new desktop running Windows 10 to retrieve data. Windows 1o recognizes the drive but will not read contents therefore I cannot retrieve data. When I try to open the drive to read the data I keep getting an I /O error message.
Can someone help me solve this problem?
Is there some way to retrieve this data?

@John-Farrell said in Hard Drive Problems - need advice:

Is there some way to retrieve this data?

Maybe, it depends.
I try these things:

1. boot the PC with a USB / CD recovery linux. I use knoppix but that is German recovery Linux and maybe not the best choice for you.
2. try to mount your defect hard drive and if successful copy the data to a different place
3. if it fails use specific recovery tools to save some data

Sometimes you can save some data, sometimes all hope is lost (e.g. reading head damaged). If the data is important, there are companies to save and recover data, but this is expensive.

"if it fails use specific recovery tools to save some data"

What software do you recommend?

https://www.ontrack.com/

Pricey but they can recover your data.

Another trick is put the drive as a slave in another box. I found that the boot area is what usually fails.. If you slave it and allow another drive to boot it, you might recover your data. You could try a Ubuntu Live CD too.

@John-Farrell

I have had good results using https://www.ccleaner.com/recuva

They have a free version, which I have used it on several drives that people have brought to me, hoping to recover pictures, etc.

Hope you can salvage the data!