Windows 7 Need help figuring out what happened.

[layitlo]

Ok I've done an upgrade to my pc. I swapped out the motherboard and the harddrive. Before I did the swap I installed everything to the drive while it was in another case. Then I put it in my case that has two other harddrives. Now all of them were working when I did the change over. One of them still works fine but the other one that has all of my important files like family pics and stuff will not open. It tells me it's cupport and unreadable. I put it in another computer to be it wasn't my computer causing it. I still have the old board and I'm going to put it together to give to my daughter so I'll try it on there also. But if it doesn't work is there anything I can do to recover it so I can atleast save the pics? They are something I can't replace. It has to be something really cheap or free I can get. I'm on ssi and broke right now so I can't afford anything. I have activekilldisk which has the recovery feature but I haven't had a chance to look at it. Thanks in advance.

 

[Tiake]

Try a google search for data recovery. Your going to pull up a very large amount of programs that charge, but there are free ones.

You could also try to use CHKDSK. Its a command prompt command that might be able to recover your files.

Here is some general information on it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHKDSK

I am not that fluent with command prompt, but I believe this would work.

1. Click your start menu button on the bottom right and look for a run option, or even the search program. Just find and run cmd. On Vista and 7 you will need to right click and select run as administrator.

2. Type "chkdsk" space "d:" space "/r". Leave out the quotes and make sure you place spaces where indicated. Replace the "d" with whatever the corrupted drive's letter is, though if its your second drive it is usually "d".

This will probably take a long time, and it may not work, but it shouldn't hurt anything. Expect at least a couple hours or more if your pc is old.

This program may also help, but I suggest using it only if chkdsk doesn't work. Seems like its free for the first 1GB, and unless you have a lot of pictures that should be enough. Make sure you specify only pictures though, or it may use your 1GB on system files.
http://www.easeus.com/datarecoverywizard/free-data-recovery-software.htm#1

 

[layitlo]

I had done the searching but didn't see one I could use. The hard drive has nothing but pics and other extras I just used it for storage. I haven't tried the checkdisk tho. I hadn't thought of that. What I'm gonna do first is put it in another pc with the hard drive that has the os and see if it will work. I have the drive with the os and the board it was connected too. I need the pics but need to see what else I have on there. I know it's about 186gig of info. I never had a issue till I swapped out my motherboard. Thanks for the ideas. I'm gonna try again tomorrow.