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    External hard drives with automatic backup.

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by shinakuma9, Jan 30, 2010.

  1. shinakuma9

    shinakuma9 Notebook Deity

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    Does anyone know how these work exactly? My dad's laptop hard drive has failed or is at the end of its lifespan, basically his laptop doesn't boot up all the way. it just loops at the welcome screen in vista, dell said it was a dying hard drive.

    Anyway, if i get one of these and most of them have a button for automatic backup, will it simply be able to just plug it in to the laptop and copy all the data without actually being in windows?
     
  2. Nankuru

    Nankuru Notebook Evangelist

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    No. They don't work like that. They run a program in the installed Windows operating system to backup so windows must work.

    Your best bet is to buy an external enclosure and put the ailing hard drive inside and attach it to another machine and see if you can read the data.

    Or pay loads of money to get someone else rescue the data for you.
     
  3. Peon

    Peon Notebook Virtuoso

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    The whole idea of making a backup is that you do so before disaster strikes.

    As Nankuru said, what you're looking for is a data recovery solution.