The Dreaded Format and Reinstall

We at Cucku hear a lot of horror stories from PC users who have lost all of their precious photos and other data because they failed to use a backup solution to protect themselves. One recurring issue is the bad advice offered by some PC vendor's support staff to "reset the PC to factory settings" when the PC fails to boot. This can often involve reformatting the hard disk drive and reinstalling windows in such a way that all user data is unnecessarily lost.

If you find that Windows does not boot, even in safe mode and Windows cannot be recovered from a previous restore point... then stop for a moment before considering a reformat. If you have a backup on a separate hard drive then you know that your data is safe. If you don't have a backup then, assuming that the hard disk drive is itself still working, the hard drive can be removed and plugged into another PC allowing you to access your data.

Cheap SATA and IDE, 3.5 inch (laptop) and 5.25 inch hard disk drive enclosures are available allowing you to plug an internal hard drive of pretty much any type into a USB slot of another computer. This means you can even do this on a friend's PC without having to dismantle their PC first.

Once your data has been backed up you can plug the drive back into the original PC safe in the knowledge that, whatever you do next, you have a copy of your files.

posted by Mark on Thursday, August 06, 2009

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