Question: I have a 1TB Toshiba HDD that was going bad, it had around 1700 reallocated sector counts before it went bust. I made backups for most of my files on an External HDD, so i didn’t lose much data. However, i was working on some stuff that couldn’t backup as the HDD gave in before i could copy it to my E.HDD. Can i use a bootable Windows 10 USB(or any windows?) to boot directly from the USB to get an interface to copy the remaining files to the external HDD. I get a BSOD that says “Bad file config info” Everytime i try to turn on my laptop. So i figured my OS files are corrupted, so maybe if i could get an OS interface i can recover my files or am i out of luck?
Answer:
Thanks a lot for taking the time to respond to my queries, figuring out everything by myself would’ve been a one-way trip to insanity.
Here’s, what i’m gonna do.
Install Windows 8.1 onto the SSD for an interface.Create a Windows 10 USB via Rufus.Unplug the SSD, and reattach the HDD.Use the USB to repair the system files in the HDD.I had around 20-25 gigs of media(videos/images) that need to be recovered, i’m under the impression that “most of those files” will be in good condition and i could copy them to my E.HDD. I think the drive still works, just that the essential system files are corrupted.I’ve never used a Linux Live CD before so i don’t know how to configure it to make it work.
Please let me know if this can go wrong in any way.
Is it a laptop or something?If you can boot into any windows from a new disk you can just copy the files off of your old disk…
If you only have one port for a disk…get an external sata to usb caddy/addapter/box
As I said before, repairing windows can permanently delete the files you want, let alone the strain of the repair could finish off the drive before you are able to recover anything or before the repair even finishes,on a drive with that many bad sectors repairing is just asking for trouble.
A live linux CD/usb doesn’t need any configuring at all and allows you to copy files off the disk if the disk will show up as a disk which it probably won’t because it basically already failed.If you have to recover you will need special software that you would have to download and run which is a bit of a hassle because of the unknown interface.
So get a ready made rescue cd like hiren’s boot cd or something, look for rescue cd on the web, those come preinstalled with recovery software that you can just pick out from a menu, and remember only recover to a different drive,plug in a usb stick if you have to.