My hard drive was locked for some reason and I was not able to access my computer instead it booted to a screen that repeatedly said diagnosing your pc then it said repairing your pc and it would do that until I turned my pc of after going to separate computer and looking for this problem I found many solutions that did not work so I got A new hard drive put windows on it thinking that I could set my old drive to D: and My new one to C: and then access my important files through that. I did this I went to my locked drive opened it and instead of showing all my folders such as (program Files) it showed this http://i62.tinypic.com/qxuss3.png (a bunch Of folders that are completely empty) but it says my data is still there http://i59.tinypic.com/t6f1x3.png how would I access my folders or unlock the drive
If you need more information tell me, I really need the data on this drive
Without physically being there to work some magic, it looks as though your file system (FAT, or MBR) could very well be corrupted (chkdisk likes to do this alot), and you may not be able to access the files yourself. In most cases, what you tried should have worked, but in cases where there is a problem with the drive itself what you see is what you get. There are people out there who could restore the files for you, but its generally a pretty steep cost to get it professionally done. There is also software out there that could help you with this, but you run a very high risk of damaging the file system even more than it already is, especially if you don't know exactly what you are doing.
Disclaimer: This is just one diagnosis from what you described, and accurate with the information at hand, but I cannot give you a 100% guarantee that this is the case without having your drive in my possession. It would be best to have a professional diagnosis by someone who is qualified to do so in order for the data that is still recoverable to be recovered properly.
you may want to try https://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-software.htm GetDataBack NTFS its $79 USD and you need to have the full version to recover data but the demo will allow you to see if your data is recoverable. and in your case I bet that it is. $79 is way cheaper than data recovery services. and this program is fairly easy to use. I will tell you that these operations usually take a very long time to complete.
Most software that works well, and is designed for people that know what they are doing doesn't cost anything. The software companies that charge for such things are just taking advantage of people, and generally doesn't work as well as the free open source stuff. Check out something called Hirens Boot CD, its free, and has tools for many things to screw your PC up pretty good if you don't know how to use it, and fix things even better if you do. Pay attention to the help files, and use the net for more detailed instructions. I am not responsible for any damage you may do using this software, but it works much better than ANYTHING you will pay for.
Gerff may be correct the file system (or partition) may be corrupt, for partition errors below is the advice I have given others and some times it works.
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(from a previous post I replied to)
Sounds to me like you may have dropped the partition, if this is the case It may mean the death of the drive, however it does not mean all the data is gone. Sometimes a linux boot usb stick can be used to retrieve the data.
After making the drive, change your system to boot from USB in bios , When you boot it may ask you of you want to install or TRY select TRY {DO NOT INSTALL}, ubuntu is linux as such it sees partitions differently , this may allow you to access the disk to save data . NOW if it has dropped the partition , even if you can get the disk to eventually be repartitioned and formatted they will usually drop it again within the next 3-4 months. (e.g. I would replace the drive)
I have used this method many times to retrieve data for corporate clients who have had hard drives fail. It does not always work but sometimes it does. Linux will often see the drive and can read from it even when the bios cannot see it, allowing you to copy off important data.
NOTE if you have a very new MB i.e. Windows 8 era , you may have to set the boot system (bios) to "legacy" boot or "non windows OS" boot to boot from the USB.
