Lost everything off Hard Drive

Bally8

Ill try to keep this short-
A few months back the connection from the power to my laptop broke and a friend fixed it by adding an external connector thing (please excuse me, Im not very tech savy) and it worked away fine for a while. Then a few weeks ago it went again. No power would go into the computer to turn it on but the laptop itself had been running fine so I decided to buy a new one and get my friend to retrieve all my files etc from old hard drive and transfer onto new laptop.

So he tried last night but it didnt work- he copied everything over onto and external hard drive but when he hooked it up to his own computer he said the files showed up for a few seconds and then sort of crumbled away infront of him on the screen. Now all that is left are some system files but nothing else.

I know Im stupid for not backing up but I hadnt and had over 4 years of college and work stuff on it. It all seems to be gone now.

Is there any way to recover it? Has anyone ever heard of this before?
Im accepting the loss now but would like to get opinions as to what happened, was it a possible virus or something?

Hal1

There's one of these thread's a week, i suggest you read through this thread as someone's posted this problem a zillion times.:p

AlmightyCushion

Bally8 wrote: »

So he tried last night but it didnt work- he copied everything over onto and external hard drive but when he hooked it up to his own computer he said the files showed up for a few seconds and then sort of crumbled away infront of him on the screen. Now all that is left are some system files but nothing else.

OK that doesn't make any sense to me. I can't see how the files were there but then just disappeared. You really need to explain this bit better.

Bally8

Firstly Hal1 I did a quick search and didnt see the same problem as mine or that thread- sorry, I dont use boards often so cut me some slack.

As for the bit where the files showed up on the screen and then crumbled, thats exactly what he said happened. He told me he has seen it once before but has no idea what causes it. Cant explain more as Im only going by what he said.

Just posted in case someone had seen this happen and could answer my questions.

No need to answer if you havent came across this problem before thanks

majiktripp

How about you take it to a computer repair store where their qualified to give a better description of the problem than your data "crumbling" away. Remove the laptops hard drive , hook it upto another PC or laptop via usb->IDE connector and copy the files over assuming theres not file system/ physical damage to the drive.

Bally8

Ok thanks