Data recovery in case of a boot failure

If you face the situation that Windows doesn't start, first you need to make sure that it is the hard drive that causes the problem. Then, you should be sure that the disk itself is OK, because an attempt to recover data might lead to the further damage of the disk.

In case of the physical damage it will be better either to immediately send the disk to a data recovery lab or to create a disk image file first and to try to recover data using only this image file rather than the failed disk.

Boot failure recovery with ReclaiMe

  1. Get a known-good Windows installation, which will provide the access to the disk in question. There are several ways to get such an installation. If it was a laptop, you can either pull the disk out the laptop or use a bootable CD. For more information about getting access to the laptop drive, please refer to the Laptop data recovery page. For the desktop there are two options as well. The first one is to disconnect the disk and put it in other computer; the second option is to use "parallel installation" (more details).
  2. Prepare the free space that you will use to save the recovered data. You need the same amount of free space as the data occupied on the failed disk.
  3. Download and install ReclaiMe File Recovery software.
  4. Select the failed disk in the device list and press Start to recover data.
  5. ReclaiMe will show the recovered files and folders as it scans the disk.
  6. Select files and folders you need to save. In case of a boot failure you usually need all the data from the failed disk, therefore just click Save and select Save all from the pop-up menu.

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