Need advice on mounting a disk using a SATA caddy

dilallio

I am trying to retreive user data from a desktop pc which boots into windows in safe mode but will encounter the blue screen of death after a few mins.

In Safe Mode, I can see one of the user accounts, but not the other 3. Unfortunately the one account is not an administrator account.

The pc is running Vista, but it has 2 hard drives (SATA) configured in some sort of RAID (not sure which type).

I have removed both hard drives and attempted to read them individually using a caddy. The caddy works perfectly with other drives, but when I try and read any of these 2 drives, it will not mount a volume. I am assuming that it's because of whatever RAID configuration is in place.

Are there any utilities or methods I can use to read & copy the user data before I re-install Vista.

In Safe Mode, I can see one of the user accounts, but not the other 3. Unfortunately the one account is not an administrator account. Is there any way I can even access the data in the other accounts from this non-administrator account?

The PC is a Dell XPS 420.

Thanks,
dilallio

bhickey

If the RAID is hardware RAID then you can use a Live CD like Ubuntu to boot up and examine the drive(s). Linux has little respect for Windows permissions and will show you whatever can be seen on the drive(s). You should then hopefully be able to copy whatever you need to an external drive.

Firblog

You can also try a boot cd (Hirren's or BART PE) that will allow you to boot into a 'mini xp' operating system and use various tools to try to get the computer up and running again or just recover the data.