# Recovering laptop data **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 24, 2005, 12:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recovering-laptop-data/313914 "2005-07-24T12:16:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Ponster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ponster/32/17081_2.png) [@Ponster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ponster)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2005, 12:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recovering-laptop-data/313914/1 "2005-07-24T12:16:29Z")
I’ve got a laptop with a very sick harddrive. As of yesterday I have been unable to boot Windows 98. Instead I’m getting a ‘Insert system disk’ error. I booted up with a Win98 Start-Uo disk to a DOS prompt and am able to ‘see’ the C: drive and the files stored on it. I ran Scandisk but it hangs on the first check (media descriptor check). I tried Spinrite but after 5 hours it was still stuck on 0.0% done. I tried HDD Regenerator. Now this program finds bad sectors and tries to repair them. It has son far found 100 bad sectors and repaired 75 of them but I still can’t boot it into Windows. So my suestion is how can I transfer the data from the harddrive to another machine before I go with a low-level format? I’ve tried plugging the drive into an external drive unit for laptops but XP wasn’t able to detect it. Because I can boot up to DOS then maybe it needs to be a DOS solution but I’m kinda out of answers at the moment 🙂 Seriel connection maybe? ---
**Author:** ![PatriotX](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c4cdca/32.png) [@PatriotX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatriotX)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2005, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recovering-laptop-data/313914/2 "2005-07-24T15:09:44Z")
If you have a desktop, there are adapters that will let you install/attach you 2.5 drive to your desktop. From there you can move the info as usual if the drive dunctions.