Used an old hard drive to build a bootable USB installer for Windows 11.
Used an old hard drive to build a bootable USB installer for Windows 11.
He’s facing a tricky situation with his backup. The tool chose a 2TB HDD, which is large and contains many files he wants to keep. Since he already warned me about poor backup habits, it’s likely he didn’t save the necessary data beforehand. There’s no simple fix with just software unless you have a reliable external drive or cloud solution ready. Sending it somewhere would be costly, so you might need to explore more permanent options.
The device interpreted the drive as a USB stick. You might use free software such as Recuva. https://www.ccleaner.com/recuva https://www.lifewire.com/free-data-recov...ls-2622893 If it was truly critical, consider sending it to a professional to avoid further damage.
I had to do this a few weeks back for some people's laptops. First, I downloaded Clonezilla and mounted it on a USB stick using Rufus. Next, I connected the old hard drive to another USB drive with an external adapter—around 30 USD I think. Finally, I performed the cloning process and everything should work fine.
He is testing the tools to check for recoverable data. It will take some time. He may need to pay a professional for recovery, that’s the lesson here. This wasn’t about installing W11, but using the media creation tool to pick his HDD with photos and other files to create a USB drive.