Off Topic for Win 10: Windows 7 Corrupted Partiiton Table & Hard Drive

Save yourself from grief... find an alternate drive.

Keep SIW2's post handy. You will likely want to re-install Win 7 and get it activated. Then you can try the upgrade to Win 10.

As well help your cousin develop a backup strategy once they acquire a device. I would recommend Macrium Reflect to get the full device (partitions, OS and data). Depending on how critical the data is you can decide on frequency, weekly, monthly or quarterly.

Jesse Williams said:

Amazon.com: 1TB 2.5 Accessories

Only thing that concerns me here is they don't state maker.

Again it depends on what you want to use computer for. Sure you might use 1TB but most users never get there.

See how big your drive is on your machine and how much free space you have today.

A smaller faster drive may serve you better. An SSD will make a world of difference. I usually use 240GB SSD for clients.

Now they don't rip DVD's or take thousands of of HD pictures. So it comes back to use and what you want to store on device.

and remember if your store 1TB of info you need to backup 1TB of info.

First off you didn't fail, the drive failed and the client failed. (No recovery media, no documentation, no data backups)

We all do what we can but there is no one on this forum that fix the guts of an HDD.

What is on her external ???

If it is a 2.5 inch drive there is no reason not to use. You would copy data to another source, maybe your computer, then install it and follow SIW2 process to get Win 7 going. Then copy data from yours to hers. Quite a lengthy process. Would depend on what is on her external.