[SOLVED] Data Recovery

[proggR]

My girlfriend's laptop took a huge crap the other week and I've been just letting her use mine for now. Today I went and picked up a SATA>USB adapter to backup her files before trying to install Windows on it again (I tried running the repair from the Windows disc since its a Vista BCD issue but it wouldn't read the disc, so installing Windows will be a pain in itself). The drive shows up in My Computer but whenever I try to open/explore it My Computer and explorer.exe freezes and I have to restart the process. I tried accessing it in the command prompt and get "The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error."

Could there be something so incredibly wrong with the drive that its been causing all the problems? If so why can't I even boot from CD on the laptop? Is there any software anyone knows about that may make the process a little easier? Even if I could do bit copy from this drive to my external to make sure I have all the data I could go buy a new HD if that were the case.

Anyway. I'm going to keep toying with this. If anyone has any suggestions that'd be helpful. Thanks in advance.

[abazoskib]

Download any of the more user friendly Linux versions, Ubuntu or Knoppix being the favorites. Put them on a bootable cd, and try to load it on her computer. If this work, you can do it. This way you avoid all Windows problem, but should still have access to the hard drive.

[proggR]

That worked. I didn't think it would because I couldn't boot the install CD but the Live CD worked. Successfully backed up everything, formatted the HD and reinstalled it all. Thanks much