by the way, to anyone else reading this thread, with the same scenario, I assure you that 99 percent of the time it does work as explained.

Over the years, many other computer engineers came to my computer repair shop for help [at times as a last resort] and often the solution was simple.

of course there are other ways to achieve the same result, and I have used most of them many times.

The same method can be used to retrieve files from a main drive to an external data drive, should the main laptop or PC drive become corrupt or fail to load its windows.

It costs nothing to try the above method first, except a bit of time.

God Bless to all.

Roy

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NOTE
Back in the day from vista onward, Microsoft introduced a Windows security feature called 'BitLocker'.

BY DEFAULT, 'bitlocker' was switched off and would only work if switched on by the windows administrator.

'BitLocker' would encrypt whole drives in real time, to protect data from being extracted from inappropriately decommissioned or stolen devices.

If your drive had this feature enabled, then the method of recovery of data becomes much more complex than the methods I have outlined in this topic.

Luckily, 'BitLocker' was rarely used in home machines, especially not computers used for music or video work, because the real time encryption going on in the background, would cut the speed and performance of the computer by up to half.

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Last edited by Roy Cooper; 02/25/25 03:07 AM.
'You Have To Kiss A Lot Of Frogs To Find A Prince'