Hay,

You can try a device like this to read the old hard drive with another computer.

I had a similar issue on an XP drive once thought I had lost some once in a lifetime pics. Bought a second hard drive reinstalled XP and drivers ( I had discs for all that stuff) hooked this device up to the drive that would not boot. It powered up the drive and the SATA connection was adapted to USB connection. Machine recognized the problem hard drive and data on it and I was able to get to and copy off all the critical stuff I thought was lost.

Lesson learned was to get software to clone an extra drive. That way if it crashes you pull old drive put in clone, copy over stuff that is regularly backed up to an external drive and go on.

I recently just went through an involved process trying to clone new Windows 7 machine. This device would not work doing that with Acronis cloning software. Several posts here about downloading and burning Windows 7 ISO file from the net. New machine did not come with backup discs either. Finally got it cloned but had to use power and SATA connections in new machine not this device.

I'm convinced cloned drives can help you avoid these sorts of failures and the long periods involved to get everything back to where it was prior to the crash.

(Sata.jpg)

Sata.jpg (70KB - 70 downloads)