HDD failure imminent

[Judy Yahoodi]

I have this oldish PC in my household that I've had since around 2009. The PC's OS is windows Vista. As I try to boot into the OS, the farthest the computer will go to is the welcome screen after entering the password and it stays on that screen after that welcome sound. How can I get the files that I have on that HDD onto another? or is pretty much no point in trying?

Also, is it possible to grab a new internal and reinstall Vista and have that drive as the primary booting device in the BIOS. By doing that I can access the other harddrive from the newly installed windows?

[CrazyDave]

If you are using another pc and this is just info to be recovered. Try pulling just the hard drive and using an external reader to excess the drive. Change the drive pins so it reflects as a slave drive. At that point you should be able to open it like another external hard drive. This is just one of many ways to resolve it.

[rotNdude]

Take the drive out of the computer and install it in another computer to get the data transferred to a different drive in that other computer.

[Judy Yahoodi]

BIOHD-7 is the error code that shows up on the computers diagnostic. (Its an HP btw, so its a Seagate drive) But I do appreciate the input, I'll see if I can get that done

[Judy Yahoodi]

Okay, I just wanted to toss in an update here.

I managed to reach the files stored within the HDD and saving things that are important. I have decided to still keep the computer, but toss in a new HDD and OS.

The HP PC is about 6-7 years old, after finding the reciept. Now my main question is will it be able to support Windows 8.1? Here's what I got in the computer:

8GB RAM
AMD Radeon HD 6670
Cooler Master 600W PSU
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 @2.5Ghz

My actual main concern is the processor. Will it support windows 8.1? I checked and it had some weird details about the processor requirements. PAE, NX, and SSE2. I just wanna know if the CPU is in the clear for 8.1

Thank you!

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Windows 7 SP1 -or- 8.1
64bit

Either OS will be fine, and will run alot better even on those specs.