Windows xp hard drive won't boot. Some data lost!!!

[Baylor3217]

One of my computers stopped working yesterday. The hard drive that xp boots from will no longer boot.

What's weird is I can plug the drive in to a another computer and access most of the data, just NOT the data on the desktop which had some of my financial data.

Anyone had this problem or know of a cheap way to try to restore the data myself?

Geek squad at best buy would cost at least $250

[Jamesqf]

Not an expert, but unless there's actual damage to the tracks, I think you should be able to put the disk in a linux machine, mount the Windoze partition, then copy files.

[Sparafusile]

Hard drives will often fail seemingly on a whim. Lucky for you you are using a hard drive with platters which means you may be able to recover some of the data. My advice is to buy a new hard drive, reinstall Windows, mount the bad hard drive as a slave and recover what you can, and recover recover the rest of your information from a backup.