My new Dell hard drive is bad....

[mom2jesserfly]

I bought my Dell computer a few months ago and had problems logging into Windows Vista. It would say no hard disk found. I called tech support twice and it would log on, but as soon as it went into power saver mode or turned off, it would do the same thing, not starting windows. They eventually told me my hard drive was bad and are sending out someone to install a new one. They require me to send in my old hard drive to get the new one, but all my information is on there.
Is there any way to get my information off of the hard drive?
I really need to get an external hard drive but didn't have one yet.

Thanks!
Melissa

[Quantos]

Not if the drive has already failed.

In the future back up all of your personal data and documents.

[DaveLembke]

No Hard Disk Found is a very serious error. Generally drives that are undetectable by the BIOS are beyond normal data recovery methods and would require a professional data recovery center to extract the data for you in a clean room environment where they mix your drives components with another same model, and revision firmware drive.

If you have any information stored on this drive that is extremely confidential and you are willing to take the data loss, I would destroy that drive with a hammer and buy a new hard drive for about $60 to $80 and install the OS to the system from the system recovery set.

If the hard drive does not have information that could ruin your identity and credit etc, you can send it back for warranty replacement and save $60-$80 on a new HD.

If your system did not come with a restore CD or DVD set then you will likely need Dell to reinstall the OS to the drive for you.

Sorry that there is no easy data recovery method for a drive like this.

[2x3i5x]

When the repair man, you might ask him if he would be able to recover files off the hard drive (assuming it's been confirmed that the old hard drive is deifinitely out of order)

[patio]

Slave Drive Tutorial

This can be done by anyone you may know who has a reasonable level of PC skills...