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Just dropped my girlfriends laptop and it now wont start. Looks like a problem with the hard drive. Its coming up with a number of errors and wont start in safe mode. I've taken the hard drive out and hope to use one of the enclosures (which worked with another laptop) to at least get the data off (main priority), the laptop is old so that's less of a problem. Any other ideas and advice on what to do if the enclosure doesn't work?
I had an external drive fail so I took the drive out and ordered a kit that lets you hook it up to another PC via usb.
Something like this perhaps.
I wanted to get the data off but didn't know if the HD failed or something to do with the enclosure. Turns out an ide thing was fried and the HD was ok.
Edit...I mean SATA not IDE!!!!
Enclosure should work if it gets partway through boot (assuming it actually fits physically).
Run checkdisk against it whilst it's cradled.
How likely is it that the hdd could be totally screwed?
Unlikely to be totally screwed but hitting them with a hammer is one way to safely delete all the data so you never know. What sort of noises is the drive making?
No noises whatsoever?
OK, a quick update, I've bought an enclosure and connected the hard disk to my laptop. The laptop installed the driver software and it now shows two new drives one is an F drive the other is G Recover drive. The F drive fails to open, the G drive opens and it looks like the files are on there but in a format not recognised by my computer. The files come up as an example FACTO001.GHS and FACTORY.GHO. How do I open and recover the files?
The Recovery partition on a pc is for restoring it to factory settings. It's unlikely to have any user data on it. F is the one you need to get at. Assuming they are one physical drive, being able to read G means it's spinning, etc, so there is hope. It may just be a software issue. I've found that drives Windows can't even find are readable with linux.
I've found that drives Windows can't even find are readable with linux.
+1
download and burn a Ubuntu CD, boot with that, and see if you can read the data
What Greybeard said.
Something like Recuva [i]might [/i]work, or Linux as others have said. Testdisk may be able to make the partition readable. Reckon you're on to a loser here though.
Why does no-one backup their data? Argh.
try this can be run from usb stick, not failed me yet
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/
good luck
