Hard drive gone?

[Tai]

I video'd it so you can hear the clicking, but it's much louder irl. This happened after (I think) I got a virus, I say that cos the last thing I remember was downloading a torrent (crack i think) and next thing I know my laptop froze, so I rebooted it, and as you can see it just says OS not found. This happened like a year ago now but I just realised that it has loads of photos on it which I need. I don't have an xp disc here but I tried installing it at the time and I'm pretty sure it looked like there was no HDD found.

Is that what's wrong? If so, is there any way of recovering my stuff or is it gone forever?


[video=youtube;vFa_MDACfn0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFa_MDACfn0[/video]

 

[mapadale]

Any information can be recovered from any hard drive so long as the folloing hasn't been done, formatted or had a copy of windows installed on top.

Now you can do what is called a soft recovery, but if it's clicking you need to do the following first. Place the drive in a freezer for an hour (Yes I am being serious), take it out and leave for 15/20 minute. While you have it in a freezer, download a program called Knoppix and copy it to disk, or if you have a copy install "Unbuntu" (This is if you can connect the drive to a pc).

Set the boot order to CDROM only, reconnect the drive and run Knoppix. This will boat the Linux OS from disk and will allow you to see if you can access the drive, if you can transfer everything you need to an exteranl drive. You do the same if your running the drive from a PC and using Unbuntu, it's no good in windows, as it won't read correctly and will through errors up when trying to read.

Now if it can't soft recover from this, your only other option is hard recover and it costs you £99 just for the drive to be looked at and then costs £100s more depending on the damage to the drive and how far they have to do the hard recover.

 

[SinGod]

i kicked my pc in the but last week, ntldr file was missing so couldnt boot.
I opened it, and i saw the cable to my hardrive was not connected anymore; so you might try that
lots of xp's on piratebay, if u need some serial's, hit me up with a pm.

Private vid btw lol

 

[Tai]

Sorry vid should work now.

mapa, what's with the freezer..?

 

[mapadale]

i kicked my pc in the but last week, ntldr file was missing so couldnt boot.
I opened it, and i saw the cable to my hardrive was not connected anymore; so you might try that
lots of xp's on piratebay, if u need some serial's, hit me up with a pm.

Private vid btw lol

Did you not read what Tai said, if it was a drive issue on the point he would get NTLDR or drive not found and certainly no os found, which is usually "No MBR Record found" and installing XP will not recover the data, as it will overwrite the data (Unless dual boot is done).

@Tai - You could also try a MBR rebuild using a floopy, if it gives you the MBR error.

Sorry vid should work now.

mapa, what's with the freezer..?

Its an old trick we used to use with click drives, by freezing it for an hour, your locking up the disks in the drive as it unfreezes it balance's them out (If they are no too damaged). But it is only a temporary fix and should get the drive working enough to access it.

Thats a proper fooked drive, it sounds like the disks are sat on each other.

 

[SinGod]

Did you not read what Tai said, if it was a drive issue on the point he would get NTLDR or drive not found and certainly no os found, which is usually "No MBR Record found" and installing XP will not recover the data, as it will overwrite the data (Unless dual boot is done).

@Tai - You could also try a MBR rebuild using a floopy, if it gives you the MBR error.



Its an old trick we used to use with click drives, by freezing it for an hour, your locking up the disks in the drive as it unfreezes it balance's them out (If they are no too damaged). But it is only a temporary fix and should get the drive working enough to access it.

Thats a proper fooked drive, it sounds like the disks are sat on each other.

ever heard of windows.old?

 

[mapadale]

ever heard of windows.old?

Yes I have, as its created from the installation or upgrade to windows Vista or windows 7 from XP. But NO it can't be recovered with a windows xp installation, as xp overwrites itself unless dual boated. Windows Vista and 7 uses a different type of installation to xp and so creates the backup, which is what the windows.old file is, which allows you to restore.

 

[Tai]

Bit of a bump, can anyone help me on possibly recovering this drive? Either how or where to go...

 

[Toddwhite]

if i cud see the vid, i may be able to help u.

 

[Tai]

It got deleted with our youtube channel :/

As mapa said,

Thats a proper fooked drive, it sounds like the disks are sat on each other.

 

[StevieLCFC]

this is just what im thinking but if the disks are sat on one another surely the only solution is to open the hdd and see if its as bad as you think/hear or at the end of the day reno any computer shop should be able to transfer data off that hdd to a spare (one u provide)

the only reason i say open it up is cos u dont wanna damage the disks anymore making any data u got lost for good

 

[Tai]

I don't really know what I'm doing in that department. So I should just take it to a pc shop? Any idea how much it would cost?

 

[Zen2]

If your drive shows up in the bios download Ultimate Boot CD it has lots of usefull utilities.

If you cant see the drive in bios and you have an identical drive you could try swap the board over, its fairly simple task just a few small screws and small cables to unclip, however the drive will need to be same brand.

As stated above we cant see the vid no more, but if the drives clicking trying to start then failing and looping the chances are you have lost everything unfortunatly.

 

[Gezza]

Dose the drive show up at all in windows? i had a problem with one of my old hard drives which it changed to a raw file, i did make a thread on here about it and im sure i posted the programe i used to get all my stuff back from it.

Edit : heres my post http://www.lomcn.co.uk/forum/showth...uests-Here-lt-lt-lt/page20&highlight=raw+file

 

[Tai]

Well when I boot up it says operating system not found, I don't think I can do anything else after that other than turn it off

Sent from my BlackBerry 9780 using Tapatalk

 

[Gezza]

Have you not got a spare hard drive ? and put a os on it then connect your not working harddrive as a slave and see if it shows up in any form then you'd be able to recover your stuff. I'd never pay hundreds to recover lost data etc if mapas prices are correct.

 

[Zen2]

Go into the bios F2 or Del or F9 or F12 maybe, each machine varies, and see if the hdd is displayed

Might even be worth just opening the hdd bay and re seating it.

 

[StevieLCFC]

its a laptop tho Zen2 so im assuming tai doesnt know how to use that hdd as an external drive . if in doubt Reno take it to a shop and ask b4 u go ahead with any work and always ask around shops

 

[Shank]

take it to pc shop and get some external HD housing case, then turn it into an external then you have 2 choices... get your important stuff off and wipe it or just keep it as an external HD and buy a new HD but thats expensive as HD prices shot up now.

This happend to me about 4 times no idea why :x

 

[Tai]

Gonna try all the suggestions on this page tomorrow thanks for replies.

All I want is the important stuff then the whole lot can go in the bin.