Hard Drive Failure; data recovery

  • Thread starter Omnis
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Omnis

Omnis

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My HDD failed this morning. I'm on another computer right now. This is horrible. All my videos, pictures, music, and everything is totally jeopardized.

Is there any way I can run some kind of data recovery? I'm thinking of sending my drive out to CBL Data Recovery. I don't know how expensive that is, though.

I'm not sure if windows is the problem or if it is indeed a hardware failure. Windows will try to load, but it ultimately fails in all modes. Sometimes, when I start it in normal mode, it will just go through a disk check thing on a blue Windows XP screen, and then it says it's deleting corrupt stuff. Like, all the things it deletes are all random code files with names like $23482 etc. It's all very strange.

My computer blue screened while trying to work in Powerpoint. Leave it to a Microsoft product to crash windows... Stupid ****. I'm going to have to bring my laptop to school or something to show them how it's messed up. My presentation with virtually finished, and it is due tommorow. Now I have to start all over again on this shaky celeron. Gross.

I feel so bad, but I'm at least trying to be somewhat serene about it. Thanks in advance for any help, guys; I could really use it.
 
Omnis
My HDD failed this morning. I'm on another computer right now. This is horrible. All my videos, pictures, music, and everything is totally jeopardized.

Is there any way I can run some kind of data recovery? I'm thinking of sending my drive out to CBL Data Recovery. I don't know how expensive that is, though.

I'm not sure if windows is the problem or if it is indeed a hardware failure. Windows will try to load, but it ultimately fails in all modes. Sometimes, when I start it in normal mode, it will just go through a disk check thing on a blue Windows XP screen, and then it says it's deleting corrupt stuff. Like, all the things it deletes are all random code files with names like $23482 etc. It's all very strange.

My computer blue screened while trying to work in Powerpoint. Leave it to a Microsoft product to crash windows... Stupid ****. I'm going to have to bring my laptop to school or something to show them how it's messed up. My presentation with virtually finished, and it is due tommorow. Now I have to start all over again on this shaky celeron. Gross.

I feel so bad, but I'm at least trying to be somewhat serene about it. Thanks in advance for any help, guys; I could really use it.
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Sorry for your loss. My roommate lost all of his data this weekend. And then I lost all of mine 2 days later, again. 6th hard drive failure in 1 year for me.

Anyway, my roommate looked up prices for data recovery. They aren't pretty. He saw that it ranged from $400 - $4000, depending on severity.

You should invest in a USB key. They're durable as hell. Backup the most important files regularily.
 
Have you tried taking the drive out and putting it in another system as a slave drive?

If it's the boot sector or windows files that are corrupt, you should be able to get at all your other data. If, however, the drive is nackered, then i'm afraid there is not much you can do.
 
You can also send out the hard drive to some companies, which can recover your software for a fee. But I would say back up more in the future either on DVD-RW or either:

Blu-Ray RW or HD-DVD RW in the future mate.
 
Yeah, telling the guy now to back up his data is real helpful...

The Slave Drive idea from DQuan is the way to go here. You take your drive out and connect it to a functioning computer. Try to recover as much of your personal data as you can.

You should be able to recover much of it, because it sounds like the system has died through a physical failure of a part of the drive surface, which previously contained a system file. This is nothing at all to do with Microsoft.

Only trouble will be if the failure is in the file allocation area.

You mention that it's a laptop whose drive has failed. You'll need a 2.5" - 3.5" IDE cable converter. Should cost you < $25 US.

Event: 6 drive failures in 12 months is a usage issue. If it's a laptop you need to start treating it more carefully. If it's a laptop or a desktop, you need to review your work area(s). Check for ventilation and magnetic interference. Got your system next to a non-shielded speaker, for example? Is it getting very hot? In a cupboard perhaps? And you need to make sure that you're powering down properly, rather than just switching it off mid-session.
 
GilesGuthrie
Event: 6 drive failures in 12 months is a usage issue. If it's a laptop you need to start treating it more carefully. If it's a laptop or a desktop, you need to review your work area(s). Check for ventilation and magnetic interference. Got your system next to a non-shielded speaker, for example? Is it getting very hot? In a cupboard perhaps? And you need to make sure that you're powering down properly, rather than just switching it off mid-session.
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I'm thinking it has been power problems. The temps are fine, and have always been fine. I'm thinking my PSU is bad. I've also lost 3 motherboards in this time period.

I wish there was a way to check for sure... I think I'm going to just get a new PSU, RMA the motherboard and drives, and sell the damn thing. I'll put the money towards a Macbook Pro. 👍
 
Thanks, Giles. We were planning on doing the slave-drive solution over the weekend. I'm hard pressed for time as I had to do this 40-slide powerpoint presentation in less than 3 days on top of all my other homework. That's all done now, though. I'll be damned if I don't get a 100%. My power went out as I was finishing up my slide-animation. Had to configure them all over again. Haha.

Anyway, I'll tell you guys how things go down once my father and I begin working on the thing. Thanks again.
 
Another option is to run BartPE, Ultimate BootCD, or Knoppix (linux liveCD) alongside an external hard drive. Put the chosen boot disk in and run the drive explorers... From there all you do is copy/paste to the external drive.

If you can figure out Knoppix, you can send the data to another pc on the network using SAMBA/Windows Networking

My personal fave is BartPE simply because it is based off a modified windows cd (which you must provide) and is very easy to work with. Knoppix comes next for ease of use, but the Linux interface can be alien to many people. UBCD is a collection of bootable dos based apps. It's one of those cds that may not help here, but it's always good to have for any hard drive related work you might run into (borked file system, MBR, etc)

UBCD: http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/
BartPE: http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/
Knoppix: http://www.knoppix.org/
 
Dude I feel your pain, this happend to me in my final year at uni, and I had to hand in my final projects and the PC went down :eek: :scared:

I later found the problem. It was the network card and TV card were conflicting and it was trying to boot from the network card, I then was able to retrieve my work and finish it. :ill:

I also was going to do the slave drive trick but I mangaed to not do it, but its not only a pain but also if there are important files you want to keep it can make you feel ill.
 
Okay, we hooked everything up and all my stuff is safe. :D

Problem is... it looks like I have the Sasser virus. :grumpy:

I already have a link for the fix. Now all I need to do is run it on both my laptop drive and this external drive that we dumped my 2.5 into.

THANK GOD FOR MACS!
 

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