Is there Any Way to Recover Data from a Dead Laptop Hard Drive?

What you may not know is that your files are not necessarily lost when your laptop crashes, and you can (with the help of a cable) recover data from a dead hard drive. The device may crash due to software problems, and your files will become inaccessible, but they will remain safe and sound on your hard drive. Below are several ways to recover data from a frozen Windows laptop.

Here we will look at several ways to access files on an old hard drive in Windows 10, 11 and other operating systems. We will also tell you how to remove the hard drive from your laptop and, of course, how to recover data from a failed internal hard drive.

What is a Dead Hard Drive Laptop?

Laptop freezing can happen due to physical damage or hardware failure, which ultimately results in no power signal, a black screen, and an inability to access valuable data. Just because the laptop is damaged does not mean the hard drive is also damaged. Thus, by using this hard drive from a faulty computer on another healthy computer, you can recover data from a faulty laptop.

What Causes Hard Drive Loss?

Some of the main causes of system boot errors and the preventive measures that can be taken to avoid such errors are as follows:

• Malware attacks on your computer: This happens when you download malicious apps or media files from unknown sources. This software application contains viruses that may cause system problems. Therefore, always update your firewall settings and always install antivirus and anti-malware software to protect your system from malware attacks.
• Operating System Failure: An operating system crash occurs when the OST tries to access an incorrect memory address, resulting in an error called General Protection Failure (GPF). Another error that can be caused by the operating system is an infinite loop that causes the computer to freeze. This bug will prevent the system from crashing when it stops responding and needs to be rebooted. Other errors, registry files have been changed, or system files are damaged or deleted.
• Incorrect BIOS settings: If your system does not boot or freezes, the basic input/output system (BIOS) that loads the operating system may be damaged. Therefore, check whether the data is overwritten when entering the BIOS. If you see this error, reset your BIOS and reboot your system.

What are the Ways to Recover Data from a Dead Hard Drive?

There are several methods for recovering data from a laptop or unbeatable hard drive.

Method One: Use the BIOS Utility

Sometimes you will see an option indicating that your system did not shut down completely. You are unable to boot due to damaged system files, malware, corrupted software or DLL files. In this case, the data can be restored using the BIOS utility supplied with the system. Follow these steps:

• On a non-working system, insert a USB drive (created using the Windows Media Creation Tool).
• Boot the system, use the boot key (usually F12) to enter the boot menu, and select the USB installation media.
• Once this is done, you will be taken to the automatic recovery settings.
• This will tell you that automatic repair cannot restore your computer, so choose the advanced option.
• After that, click on Find Alliance.
• Click on Advanced Options.
• Select Command Prompt.
• You can see a command prompt window pop up. Type notepad.exe and press Enter.
• In Notepad, choose File > Open.
• Click “This PC” and continue browsing to select files and folders to recover.
• Select the All Files option from the file types in the text to access them.
• Right-click the selected file, select Upload, and then select your external drive.

However, this process will fail if the data is stored on the C drive. Installing a new window will permanently format the C drive.

Method 2: Save Data from a Non-Working Laptop

Follow these steps to recover files from a damaged laptop:

Remove the hard drive from the damaged laptop and connect it to another work computer. To use it as a hard drive, connect it to a hard drive connector (such as a SATA-to-USB converter) or an external enclosure. If your computer supports a PATA/IDE 3.0 port, use a compatible cable to connect the hard drive.

• Open disk management on your computer.
• If the hard drive is detected but appears as RAW on the system, assign a drive letter to it.
• To change the drive letter:
• Right-click on disk space.
• Select the “Change drive letter” and root or path… options.
• Click the Add button and select a symbol from the drop-down list.
• Click “OK,” and the drive will be visible in Explorer.

Method 3: Use Cloud Storage

This method is useful if you have backed up your files to cloud storage such as Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, etc. You can easily restore them by logging into your account

Follow these steps to recover data from a damaged laptop using cloud storage:

• Log in to a cloud storage account from another device.
• Navigate to all the files you want to recover.
• Download all files right now on any computer or mobile device.
• After downloading the file, copy it to an external hard drive or USB drive.
• Finally, the disk was safely removed from the computer.

Recovering Data from a Dead Hard Drive using Third-Party Software

When your system crashes or won’t boot, you try to fix it. During the entire process, you risk losing important data. Therefore, to avoid data loss, you can recover important system files, images, videos and documents using a reliable application like SysTools Hard Drive Data Recovery Tool. It can recover almost all lost or deleted data from damaged, damaged or inaccessible FAT 16, FAT32, NTFS and NTFS 5 partitions. It can recover damaged or deleted images, videos, documents and other important files from a damaged Windows hard drive.

Also read: Know How to Check Hard Disk Health in Windows 1, 10, 8, and 7 OS.

A Step-by-Step Guide to retrieving files from a Dead Laptop Hard Drive

1. Download, install and run the hard drive recovery tool.
2. Select the hard drive partition from which you want to recover data.
3. Click “Scan” and wait for the program to scan.
4. Preview recovered hard drive data in software panel
5. Select the required data or save the complete data.

Conclusion 

This article describes three proven solutions to recover data from a dead hard drive. Choose the method that best suits your needs. Be sure to regularly back up your computer to an external hard drive to protect valuable data from accidental loss. Also, feel free to share this article with anyone who needs help with laptop data recovery to protect their data.