Recovering an old save file

Hi there,

I once had an awesome save where I was the manager of Chelsea and had turned them into an awesome force. I think this save was on either Fm2011 or Fm2012. I had this on my old PC which 2 years ago, something went wrong. When I turned it on, one evening it would not start up and I could hear this repetitive clicking sound. It was an old PC and thought it was time to buy an all new PC anyway so I did not look into fixing it. However from the clicking, I'm guessing something went wrong with the hard drive, but I never looked into it and just put the old PC away and have not looked at it since.

I am thinking of buying an external hard drive reader, something like this: http://www.amazon.co.uk/AKORD%C2%AE-Drive-Reader-Convertor-Adapter/dp/B00EQ7UEK4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1458643411&sr=8-1&keywords=external+hard+drive+reader and taking the hard drive out of the old pc and plugging it in to my new pc.

Now hopefully it wasn't the hard drive that failed and I will be able to access the files on there.

Is it possible to copy over the saved game of my chelsea save to my pc. Install fm2011 or fm2012 (whichever it was) onto my new PC and continue my chelsea game? If it does work, is there anything from the save that will be missing, like player histories, biographies? Do I run the risk of corrupting the saved file at all if I try to play it on a new computer?

I'm far from a computer geek, but i feel able to answer this.

It really sounds like it was the hard drive that went wrong. It is possible, but not certain that you'll be able to recover it from the external hard drive reader. If the hard drive is 'broken' it's possible that the only way to recover data would be via a specialist service, which would be very expensive. Rather than buying your own reader, much simpler just to take the hard drive to a computer repair shop and see if they can do it. I wouldn't be optimistic.

However if you can recover the game save file, then there'd be no problems reinstalling the version of FM and chucking the save file in the games folder / SI / Documents. save files are quite small, and can fit on a USB drive.

From my experience you might lose any progress you made on the hall of fame, but I'd guess everything else would be ok.

The problem will probably be that your old hard drive is dead as a dodo.

Yeah, I am thinking the hard drive is most likely gone. Was thinking about opening the hard drive up and take a look inside and see if it was just the hard drive head that has got stuck. I've looked at Youtube videos showing how if it doesn't go back to the starting position it you can still fix it, but then its not advisable to open the casing up. Don't really want to spend money on having a specialist looking at it though.

Even easier would be to power off your new pc, open it up and see if there is a spare connection on the main board for a second hard drive and a loose power cable intended for a hard drive coming from the internal power supply, that would fit the old drive (molex or sata power connector). It would be very unusual if there wasn't. You can then take out the old drive and hook it up to your new pc directly. No need even to physically install it, just lay it on a flat surface besides the pc. When you now start the pc, if the drive still works it will show up in file explorer.

Even easier would be to power off your new pc, open it up and see if there is a spare connection on the main board for a second hard drive and a loose power cable intended for a hard drive coming from the internal power supply, that would fit the old drive (molex or sata power connector). It would be very unusual if there wasn't. You can then take out the old drive and hook it up to your new pc directly. No need even to physically install it, just lay it on a flat surface besides the pc. When you now start the pc, if the drive still works it will show up in file explorer.

Tried this today. Started up and the hard drive was clicking, that's the end of idea of trying to get my chelsea game back. Shame.

Thanks for all the help.