I'm posting this here because it's not railway related although it does affect my ability to model ……………..

A couple of weeks or so ago, I reported the fact that the hard drive on my old computer, running on Windows Home XP, had died.

There is a fair bit of data on that drive that I'd like to salvage if possible - not the least of which are all my Scalescenes downloads !!  I'm not sure if John Wiffen keeps a record of his customers, or even if he does, would he be prepared to  re-send my purchases access codes for the kits I've bought.  There are other bits I'd like to recover if possible but not enough to justify expensive professional recovery organisations.

Having spoken to Matt, who was very helpful, and watched several online suggestions, I have just taken delivery of a SATA to USB connector.  The SATA plugs into the hard drive and the USB leads into another computer and , with luck, one can access the data on the dead disc and copy it to the new computer.

Easy peasy - until I thought long and hard about it.  The dead drive was running on Home XP but, except for 1 very old laptop, all my other devices are running Windows 10. 

Can I copy data from a Home XP computer to a Windows 10 computer ? 

Just in case there's some beastie in there, I don't want to connect the dead drive to a "current" computer ……………

In theory a hard disk used for Win XP should be able to be read by Windows10. You say the hard disk failed tho, which may mean plugging it in to a dock might not help….

As Chris said, using the dock (or other adaptors) will only work if the drive is still alive, that is, if only the Windows has corrupted but the drive can spin up and be read still.

If the drive is completely dead, the only solution is to go to a specialist data retrieval centre. They use clean-room techniques to open up the disk drive and put the platters on something akin to an old record player that spins the platter and tries to read it. Needless to say, this is very expensive, and recommended only for information that is absolutely vital, life or death type data.

As far as Windows 10 reading older Windows XP disks, the formats will be the same and should make no difference. I have reused older hard disks many times in newer computers with more up to date operating systems.

The scalescenes download links are in an email so if you log into your email from a different machine you should be able to find the original email, if the link does not still work I am sure you could possibly use it as proof of purchase with John Wiffen.

Thanks for your input guys.
Firstly, yes, I realise that if the problem lies within the hard drive, it won't make any difference directly connecting it to another machine.  However, if the problem is something to do with another component in the culprit computer, then a direct connection from the drive to another machine would by-pass the faulty works …..

"Online" suggests it's worth a try…….

Regarding the Scalescenes codes, it would appear that, if I read an e-mail on one computer, it often doesn't come up on my other devices - even though they're supposed to be linked …..

Obviously I can't access those mails on the faulty drive.  I'm sure I didn't bin the original mails once I'd downloaded the files.  Another problem appears to be that, for some reason, all my devices appear to ditch whole batches of e-mails randomly without my permission !

Just a thought - I'm assuming Scalescenes downloads come from "Scalescenes" - searching all my mailboxes for Scalescenes doesn't bring up anything.  

Could they come as something else ?

As I mentioned Peter, my suspicion was corrupted windows as mentioned the system WAS  trying to load and even getting to the desktop. You mentioned the computer only had one hard drive ( but that drive MAY be partitioned to give the appearance of two drives ?). Then windows was giving you problems. My suspicion was either partial corruption of the machines Bios, causing some issues with hardware drivers or more likely corruption of windows XP causing driver issues which would effect hardware as well. IF the drive still spools up then there is hope that you can recover data yourself. Yes windows 10 will happily read the disk via a caddy providing the disk information is not corrupted. Even if it IS as long as the drive can read/ write then there is software available to recover data. Try the Caddy, see if a new drive appears with options to view it. If not as long as the drive is seen we should be able to progress
Cheers

Matt

Just an addition, cable not caddy as that's what you mention. Either will work as long as they have the necessary connections. Secondly, BEFORE you plug the cable/ Drive into another machine, open that machines file manager and on the left you see a list of current drives etc quite often Drive C and then possibly Drive D or Data. Make a note of these Drives and then plug in the errant drive via cable. The reason for this is that the drives/s on the errant Disk will probably be assigned different drive letters by windows 10 temporarily rather than you having two Drive C's or two Drive D's and you may see two SYSTEMS as the errant disk ALSO has an operating system on it. It's easier to check before rather than trying to figure which is which AFTER you plug it in  :thumbs

Peter, pm sent.
Shaun.

Hi Peter,

Regarding the emails from Scalescenes. I have just checked in my Model Railway folder in my saved emails and the emails are just simply saved as 'Scalescenes'.
You have however prompted me to transfer all such downloads onto a memory stick as a back up. They are in fact saved on a separate drive within the computer but belt and braces.

Thanks Gary.

It's strange but either I or the other computers must have deleted them.  I say strange because I'd never normally delete such things.


Like you, any future purchases will be saved to an extrrnal device.


Having said that, I did have an external 2tB backup running constantly but it seems that whatever got ot the computer was copied to that backup too.  My other computer can't open that either saying "drive corrupted - unable to find it"


So much for paid for "nasty checkers"……..

PM sent Peter

Hey Peter - just saw this thread. Did you get anywhere with getting access to the old drives?

Hi Jay

No I didn't.  I got a connector from the hard drive to USB but at the moment, I'm not at home so can't see if it works.

John Wiffen - the boss of Scalescenes has sent me link to most of my fairly recent purchases so I can access those - I just need to learn how to unzip his downloads on Windows 10 - it doesn't seem to be unzipping them although this, very old,  laptop I've brought with me can do it !!

There's loads of stuff on that drive, it was my main computer, although I'm not sure how much of it I'll need in the future.  Nobody has screamed at me yet for not replying to something ……………

When I get home next Monday, I'll connect it up and see if I can access ianything.  If I were being honest, I'd say there's little chance …….