Solved! HP Pavilion 15 Hard Drive Failure

Oct 5, 2021
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It started when running the Driver Updater on the Avast ultimate package. One of the updates caused the screen to flicker so in an attempt to restore to last update it actually reset the laptop to factory settings wiping all my documents.

On trying to power the laptop to see if I could recover the documents it wouldn't load and said that the hard drive had failed. I have removed the hard drive and tried connecting it to another laptop with a USB connector but don't know where to look for the documents. I know it is a bit of a long shot but do I have any hope of recovering any files? Is there a way I can do this manually? Many thanks.
 
Solution
If the files are REALLY important, there are professional services that do recovery (can be very expensive). If you are just trying to find file that were deleted during the refresh, it depends on what type of refresh was done. Are you saying the files don's show up when you look at files while mounting this drive as a external device on another computer, here are some steps to follow:
  1. Unplug your drive from the guest computer (with the power off)
  2. Open Computer Manager as an Administrator
  3. On the left, click on Storage/Disk Manager. You should see one or more disks. Take a picture of this.
  4. Shut down the computer and plug in your disk.
  5. Repeat the steps above. There should now be a new disk showing. It will show as...
You may get some back. There are a number of recovery software products available. Try not to use the laptop until you run the recovery software as you will overwrite files. Doing the search using another PC (as you have tried to do) should work the best.. I don't have specific recommendations as I run regular backups and haven't needed it for a long time (I learned the hard way also!).

I don't like the generic driver update utilities. I personally rely on Windows updates and the Intel Driver Support Assistant. I occasionally check the laptop vendor support site also. I also have an HP and do that check via the HP Support Assistant. I have found Windows is fine except for one driver (sound) years ago. I don't install the "optional" drivers. Intel has been OK also but you may not want to install graphics updates. HP Support Assistant has been good.
 
Oct 5, 2021
2
0
10
Hi, thanks for the reply. I have tried Disk Drill which didn't really find anything while Recuva showed some files as unrecoverable. Is there a manual way to find lost Word files - which folders to look into?
 

mrmike16

Honorable
Hi, thanks for the reply. I have tried Disk Drill which didn't really find anything while Recuva showed some files as unrecoverable. Is there a manual way to find lost Word files - which folders to look into?
Word Documents would usually be found in the C:/Users/(your user name)/Documents folder, where C is the default hard drive that files save to. Sometimes they are saved in the Downloads folder or Desktop, if that's where you chose to save them.
The driver program should not reset a computer without permission, at the very least not a full reset where it wipes all files.
 
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If the files are REALLY important, there are professional services that do recovery (can be very expensive). If you are just trying to find file that were deleted during the refresh, it depends on what type of refresh was done. Are you saying the files don's show up when you look at files while mounting this drive as a external device on another computer, here are some steps to follow:
  1. Unplug your drive from the guest computer (with the power off)
  2. Open Computer Manager as an Administrator
  3. On the left, click on Storage/Disk Manager. You should see one or more disks. Take a picture of this.
  4. Shut down the computer and plug in your disk.
  5. Repeat the steps above. There should now be a new disk showing. It will show as several partitions.
  6. Right click on the large partition and click on Change Drive Letter and paths
  7. Assign an unused drive letter, such as H.
Your old files should now show up in explorer as drive H. Hope I understand what you are asking. Try to run the recovery software on drive H if you don't see your files. Let me know what happens.
 
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