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Contacted an old friend who works in iT, cyber security now, told him I have 5 hardrives with so much music my own and commercial stuff. Told him I am trying to get now and wav files off disks, trying to hook it up to current system but it's password protected, he says I'm sol.
I call geek squad and the kid reads from most commonly asked questions, can you recover password protected files.
Answer, yes if you can provide the password. So answer us no cause who would have that?
I used to get a new PC every two years caused it get so slow and the blue screen of death.
So I was excited of possibly if using stuff I tracked and sang, throwing them into suno fir a cover, but no dice.
I feel for you sir. are in the USA. the reason I ask is because if you are like me in the UK, I would try to help. I spent over 35 years getting data from drives. retired now but still have the knowledge and skill.
There is always a way unless a drive is physically damaged.
God Bless
Roy
'You Have To Kiss A Lot Of Frogs To Find A Prince'
I feel for you sir. are in the USA. the reason I ask is because if you are like me in the UK, I would try to help. I spent over 35 years getting data from drives. retired now but still have the knowledge and skill.
There is always a way unless a drive is physically damaged.
God Bless
Roy
Oh do tell .. yeah I would think so too, I'm sure if Hillary Clinton had password protected files they could get them if they wanted
what type of drives they are? what os did you have when using them? do you remember what password protection method or software did you use to password protect the drives?
God Bless
Roy
'You Have To Kiss A Lot Of Frogs To Find A Prince'
what type of drives they are? what os did you have when using them? do you remember what password protection method or software did you use to password protect the drives?
God Bless
Roy
The majority was from 2007 and on,but believe sata hard drives.
But I don't know what disk is what.
I recall xp, vista, Xl ,windows 10, 11
I dint even have the disks in front of me they're in storage.
I have one that works but not much in it, and another that I can't even see what's in it
I did no individual passwords, just for the whole computer.
okey dokey, but do you mean that you put the drives into other pcs as a primary drive, and the windows os on the drive would not load. or did you put the drives into another pc as a slave drive?
Roy
'You Have To Kiss A Lot Of Frogs To Find A Prince'
okey dokey, but do you mean that you put the drives into other pcs as a primary drive, and the windows os on the drive would not load. or did you put the drives into another pc as a slave drive?
On the earlier system that the drive was originally running, was it the windows on the drive that was password protected or did you password the drive from the machines bios.
sorry that I keep asking questions, but I want to fully understand, before I see what we can do.
My father told me that its better to be thought an idiot than to open my mouth or offer advice and confirm that I am an idiot..lol
roy
Last edited by Roy Cooper; 01/23/2501:00 PM.
'You Have To Kiss A Lot Of Frogs To Find A Prince'
sounds to me that the wnnows11 on your laptop sees the external drive has another windows on it that would require a password to run, and asks for the windows password to access it. That is a normal windows feature.
What we have to do is use a cd or usb boot disk to start your laptop. you should then be able to see your laptop drive and your external drives as just data drives.
then browse the external drive, locate the directories with the files that you want and copy them to a folder on your laptop drive. The folder on the laptop drive should be created before doing all of this.
If that goes to plan, then you should be able to reboot the laptop on its own windows11 and hopefully the files would be there.
Once all the files that you want are safe and sound on your laptop, you can keep the external drive for backup as is, or format it and send the files back to the drive.
this for me would be my first method to try, but I have others if this did not work.
Roy
Last edited by Roy Cooper; Yesterday at05:21 AM.
'You Have To Kiss A Lot Of Frogs To Find A Prince'
sounds to me that the wnnows11 on your laptop sees the external drive has another windows on it that would require a password to run, and asks for the windows password to access it. That is a normal windows feature.
What we have to do is use a cd or usb boot disk to start your laptop. you should then be able to see your laptop drive and your external drives as just data drives.
then browse the external drive, locate the directories with the files that you want and copy them to a folder on your laptop drive. The folder on the laptop drive should be created before doing all of this.
If that goes to plan, then you should be able to reboot the laptop on its own windows11 and hopefully the files would be there.
Once all the files that you want are safe and sound on your laptop, you can keep the external drive for backup as is, or format it and send the files back to the drive.
If you are OK with that I will tell you where to get a bootable cd or usb drive from and how to use it.
ps, this for me would be my first method to try, but I have others if this did not work.
Roy
Ok, but why wouldnt profit people know this?
Yeah I'm sure it does say hmm,bum windows 11 but this is vista, not allowing that.
So the idea is to reboot the new laptop with a boot up disk, I think I may have that in the box if new laptop. And then it will recognize everything?
I will definitely try it but couldn't be that simple could it?
using the windows installation disk that came with the laptop, to boot from, will not work, it will follow the same rules as the windows installed on your laptop. and could even try to reinstall itself onto your laptop.
it has to be a non normal boot disk, as explained. although the Hiren’s BOOT 2024 USB Win11 PE has a windows 11 front end, that windows is just that. a stripped down version of win11, without lots of the normal win11 stuff.
if you download the iso and burn a cd or usb stick, it will make a special bootable Hiren’s BOOT disk with a win11 front end. [which will give access to all drives,via 'my pc' on the Hiren’s BOOT disk functional desktop]
It does not matter what version of windows is on the laptop or external drive. these will be seen as data drives by the cd or usb version of Hiren’s BOOT disk that will be used to run the show..
--------------------------------- the Hiren’s BOOT disk will also have a vast array of repair and recovery programs already installed on it that are free to use. Because Hiren’s BOOT disk has been around for so many years, quite a few of the programs are dos based or need to be opened via windows cmd prompt.
if Hiren’s BOOT 2024 USB Win11 PE fails to run on your laptop or pc, then earlier versions of Hiren’s BOOT are available for download in zip file format.
the link below will show a list of utilities that can be found on Hiren’s BOOT disk. and also earlier versions for download.
usng the windows installation disk that came with the laptop will not work, it will follow the same rules as the windows on your laptop. and could even try to reinstall itself onto your laptop.
it has to be a non normal windows disk, as explained. although the Hiren’s BOOT 2024 USB Win11 PE
has a windows 11 front end, that windows is just that. a stripped down version of win11, without the normal win11 stuff in it.
it will make a win11 runable boot disk on the cd or usb stick.
It does not matter what version of windows is on the laptop or external drive. these will be seen as data drives by the cd or usb version that will be used to run the show..
its only simple if you know the answer..lol
roy
Roger that, thanks for the info will have to see where I'm at
or download the rufus app from the Hiren’s site and use it to create the cd, dvd or pen drive from the downloaded iso file. rufus https://www.hirensbootcd.org/usb-booting/
roy
Last edited by Roy Cooper; 01/25/2507:01 AM.
'You Have To Kiss A Lot Of Frogs To Find A Prince'
by the way, if when running on the Hiren’s cd or usb stick, you still cant see any files on the external sata drive, then we can do some further steps. so i would suggest that maybe you should start with one of the drives that had asked for a password.
then again, maybe not, just a thought.
also check the desktop, mydocs and download folders on the old sata drive for stuff that you may have forgotten about.
========================
Sometimes back in the day I would be asked to recover a vast amount of data, 50=100 plus gigs from an old sata drive, and the laptop or pc that they wanted the data to be copied onto, did not have room for that amount of data, or the laptop I was copying to was an old/slow machine.
I knew that it would take up to 10-20 hours or longer to copy, so I would copy a few files over to the laptop or pc first, then reboot from the laptop or PC, and check that the files I copied over were not corrupt and worked as expected on the laptop or PC system I had copied them to. if the copied files were OK then I would reboot using the Hiren’s boot cd or usb pen-drive, and delete the windows folder on the old sata drive. [having first ascertained from the customer that the old external drive was not required to run again from the installed windows on it]
then the windows on the laptop would not see the windows folder on the old sata drive because it was no longer there, and would not ask for a password.
probably best not to do this unless you have to, but i wanted to mention it as i have done it many times in the past successfully -----
God Bless
Roy
Last edited by Roy Cooper; 01/31/2510:55 AM.
'You Have To Kiss A Lot Of Frogs To Find A Prince'
Out of interest, originally back in the day, passwords for windows were mainly used to stop a worker from removing a work hard drive, and taking it home to access and view the data on his/her home machine.
or
to stop a child from playing on dad or mom's home computer and causing problems.
of course passwords are useful for other reasons.
---------------------
I personally have never used a windows password because I hated having to type it in every time my computer was idle.
you can choose when installing windows, to not add a password, or you can remove the active password in windows itself.
Thus the problems that you are having, would not occur if you removed the drive and wanted to access it on another system.
Just a thought for when you next change your drive.
God Bless
Roy
Last edited by Roy Cooper; 01/25/2501:11 AM.
'You Have To Kiss A Lot Of Frogs To Find A Prince'
Out of interest, originally back in the day, passwords for windows were mainly used to stop a worker from removing a work hard drive, and taking it home to access and view the data on his/her home machine.
or
to stop a child from playing on dad or mom's home computer and causing problems.
of course passwords are useful for other reasons.
---------------------
I personally have never used a windows password because I hated having to type it in every time my computer was idle.
you can choose when installing windows, to not add a password, or you can remove the active password in windows itself.
Thus the problems that you are having, would not occur if you removed the drive and wanted to access it on another system.
Just a thought for when you next change your drive.
God Bless
Roy
Well this doesn't happen every day. And it will never happen again cause I have a external hard drive now, I didn't then.
It's not like I knew that would happen I didn't.
Never asked for my PCs to crash, and being sold new PCs cause the cost of repairing or replacing a drive was about 25% to 50% of buying a new one in sale, especially at membership prices.
But knowing this now doesn't help me, hindsight is 20/20.
But thanks for the tips, I will have to look into deeper, but was told by several couldn't be done
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.
It costs nothing to try the above method first, except a bit of time.
God Bless to all.
Roy
------------------------------------------
NOTE Back in the day from vista onward, Microsoft introduced a Windows security feature called 'BitLocker'. 'BitLocker' would encrypt whole drives in real time, to protect data from being extracted from inappropriately decommissioned or stolen devices.
If your drive used this feature, 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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