[Possible Virus]

I'm not sure what you mean by dead but you may be looking for something different.

 

Recuva is for restoring deleted files or if you format your hard drive/partition then it will aid in restoring files.

 

You may just need to purchase one of these: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16812270111

 

Take the hard drive out, hook it up to another computer with this device through USB and see if you can find the files.

 

If the hard drive is dead and wont spin up nothing is going to help you, sorry.

 

If the virus you suspect has deleted files or stopped the hard drive from booting your OS then yes Recuva will work but you need to run it on a working computer with the hard drive attached to it in some way.

 

If this is a hard drive that did not have a bootable partition and was used for storage then just install this program, scan for the files and you will see the results when its finished scanning. You can then choose to restore the files to a separate drive/partition.

 

Just follow the Step by Step wizard which is really easy.

 

Good luck, hope this helps.

 

The computer contains two internal hard drives. One of them works, one of them doesn't. There is

also a working external drive, very large.

 

The hard drive is not mechanically dead. It spins up. The files are there, I just can't open them.

The important thing is, I need some step-by-step instructions on how to create a totally-safe and

totally isolated place on the live drive, for recovery. I don't want to infect my working drive with

any possible virus on the non-working drive.

[Possible Virus]

I have never used Recuva, or any other such program. I have very little computer knowledge or skill.

I have a computer with three hard drives, two of them internal. One is dead, I suspect due to a virus. How can I have Recuva save the recovered files to a quarrantined portion of another drive, so that I can scan that section for viruses before using it? Thank you.