Sorry to do this again - considering I don't tend to be around on the forums much I know it's a bit rude, but you guys are the best people I know to ask about this.

Today I found my laptop had rebooted itself whilst I was out for no apparent reason, and refused to log on because of hard drive problems. Chkdsk froze after finding a single indexing error, and if skipped it logged into Windows before crashing (blue screen style) since the corruption was in system32 (of all the directories to pick...).

I'm currently waiting for the PlanetMicro site to get back in action before ordering a new hard drive and external 2.5" caddy. The question is, can I still get the files off? The fact that I can log-in (albeit with a crash) suggests some files are still accessible. However, I'm currently on a Ubuntu live CD which won't let me get to the files. Will putting the drive in a caddy/enclosure make any difference?

Normally I keep regular back-ups, but I've just arrived a university with the bare minimum and so left my external drive at home.

My current plan is to get a new hard drive, put the old one in the enclosure and try to grab some of the files from it (possibly through windows on a friend's computer).

Any suggestions or recommendations?

And while I think of it, the 1/8H form factor for a laptop hdd and all that - does that convert to inches/mm, and if so how?

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My site

Sorry to here about your computer problems. and dont be sorry. Its peoples choice if they want to read or reply anything.

You say you cant acessor log in or what ever. Does it freeze up or say an error message or what. Just rebbot. What happens.

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Aaron's Stuff

If your hard drive is buggered (which may or may not be the case, but probably is by the sound of it), you might still be able to get stuff off it. Dont know if Ubuntu not being able to read it is a sign of anything, could be that the drive is beyond rescue, could be that Ubuntu cant read NTFS. You should definitely try reading it in a windows machine.

As for form factor, most laptop hard drives are 2.5".

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"If you talk at all during this lesson, you have detention. Do you understand?"

• My yr11 Economics teacher

Thanks for the replies. When I try and boot from the drive either:
1. It refuses to boot completely and just displays a white text message saying it can't boot from the HDD
2. It gets to chkdsk, but freezes
3. It gets to windows (skipping chkdsk) but the blue screen of death comes up while booting and I have to reboot.

@wil5on: Thanks for the reply. In terms of form factor, I know that most drives are 2.5", but there are some 1/8H, 1/4H etc specifications on the dabs website. Aria.co.uk for some reason doesn't list these, so I've taken a gamble and ordered one from them (Fujitsu 40Gb). Time will tell...

Does anyone know if I'll have any problems with the rescue disk trying to install Windows on a new hard drive?

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My site

what is the bsod error number? I can look it up and tell you how the fix the problem, or at the least, what the problem is. You should be able to do all the fixin's from the recovery console off the XP disc.

Chances are, it's something stupid. Like a corrupted registry, user profile, funked up MBR (which Windows likes ruining quite often, oddly enough). Or even some driver isn't loading properly. Anyway, pop the error number up here.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

funked up MBR (which Windows likes ruining quite often, oddly enough).

I've only ever had Windows eat my MBR after I installed it on the same drive I had a Linux partition on. Crono is right though, Windows likes to eat things that are necessary for Windows to function. Simple way to fix that is either from the recovery console or through a repair install, but like Crono said, you need to look up the BSOD message and find out what exactly is wrong. It sounds like it's probably one of these kinds of problems, which are usually easy enough to fix after some googling.

Does the hard drive make any odd noises like clicking? If so it can pretty much only be that the hard drive is dying, and your best bet is to plug the HDD into another computer as the secondary and try to copy the files onto another disk. If the hard drive craps out before you can you'll have to put it in the freezer in an anti-static bag inside an airtight ziplock-type bag with as little moisture as you can manage for several hours and hope that chilling it buys you enough time to get all the files. Only real option if that fails is give up on the data or transplant the platter into a working hard drive, which gets either really expensive (send to a data recovery firm, several hundred $$) or really tricky with low probability of success (do it yourself, very carefully in a very clean space). Hope that isn't the case :wink:

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o

Thanks for all the tips. I'm pretty sure the problem is mechanical now, as ther hdd is making some really weird noises (for which the best method of getting it to be a bit quieter is whacking it - something I'd rather not make a habit of). I'll try and get the BSOD error number at some stage today though.

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My site

Forget it. If the HDD is starting to make weird noise: replace it. Copy all your stuff over though. Use some program like partition manager or hdd clone or something like that and you'll be good (no reinstalling required or anything like that, it'll 1:1 copy the drive)

The BSOD error would help to get the Windows part running again, however, so still grab that number. But if it's starting to fail, get your stuff off of it as fast as possible.

I also just noticed you said you're replacing the drive with a Fujitsu drive...

You're in for a world of pain.
I hope the one you bought had a nice warranty or good reviews. Otherwise, there's a very good chance it will be the worst HDD you've ever used.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

sigh Well, it was the only 40Gb one they had, and I wasn't prepared to fork out ?70 from a student budget for 100Gb which I would never use.

As usual, time will tell. I'll see how it goes. Are you specificall refering to Fujitsu laptop drives or all of their HDDs?

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My site

All of their hard drives.

I've never seen one actually work. Ever.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

Well, I suppose there's a first time for everything...

I've read about the freezer trick before which seems to work fairly well for some people. Do I just take it straight out of the freezer, slam it in the computer/enclosure and hope for the best or wait for it to warm up a little? I'm assuming the former, since I read something about the cold increasing the seperation between the head and the platter.

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My site

Not sure about after removing from the freezer but if you do put in the freezer, put it in a plastic bag and remove all air and seal it well.

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SourDough2.0 - With Strawberry Jam

This thread is starting to sound excatly like the 7 best ways to
destroy your HD article on ... was it HW secrets? :biggrin: Freezer, dropping
it from feet high, etc. There were best case scenarios and worst case
scenarios, but all in all those tricks just made it worse if they
didn't kill the drive completely.

I suggest cloning the data to another disk. Like Crono suggested. That's the safest method for your data.

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''Everyone wades in s**t until they're competent enough to walk on it. Jesus style.''
Dystopia - Empires

:smile: I was thinking of the whole freezer trick as a last resort anyway, but judging by the worrying noises that it's been making, it might well be necessary. I'll have a go at it as it is at the moment. Everything should arrive tomorrow, so I'll let you know how it goes.

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My site

Oh yeah. One more tip ... until the new drive comes, stop using the drive. If the thing is already dying, it will only get worse.

I've heard of that freezer "trick", but, It's never made much sense to me ... Because, the heat capacity of the metal used on the discs must be VERY high, since HDDs get hot, it'd be ridiculous that only a cold hdd or hot hdd would work properly. So, I imagine putting it in the freezer would either not work, or take a very long time. It'd also be my guess that other materials in the drive would get damaged by freezing.

It just never made sense to me. What the drive really needs is a new head system, which you could do ... but you need a 'clean room' or else the platters will get ruined.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

I'm on a desktop for the time being, and was using Ubuntu's live disc as a temporary replacement at one stage (although the hdd kept spinning up for some reason). I've been trying to avoid using the original hdd for the moment since the screaming-tortured-animal sounds were pretty anti-social to the people in the net room. And it sounded like bad news as well.

I know I probably need to have a look at the heads and platter, but its a bit dusty here and I wouldn't want to start looking inside the hdd unless I really have to. There are a surprisingly large number of people who claim the freezer thing works, so I'll give it ago if I have to, but I'd rather not have to!

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My site

Dont put the drive in the freezer, as Crono said, the only thing that can do is make it worse.

Dont open the drive if you ever want to use it again, the distance between the platter and the head is smaller than most smoke particles, so if the tiniest grain of anything gets in there it will scratch up your platter when it starts spinning.

Dont power up the computer with the drive connected until youre ready to save your files, it will spin up the drive whether youre booting from it or not.

Follow these simple rules and youll probably get most of your data back. Good luck!

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"If you talk at all during this lesson, you have detention. Do you understand?"

• My yr11 Economics teacher

Well, all the kit's arrived and seems to be ok. The enclosure worked like a charm and I managed to recover a website I was working on for a friend. I haven't been able to recover the my documents folder which gives an access denied message, but I'll have a crack at that with Ubuntu later on and see if the enclosure makes a difference.

The Toshiba recovery disk seems to be working its magic at the moment and installing everything onto my new drive. I've used the extra 10 gigs for a Ubuntu install so I at least have something more solid to fall back on.

Thanks very much for the help folks. I managed it all without resorting to a freezer too! :smile:

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My site

Heh, reminds me of what my father and brother recently tried. My brothers HD was totally gone, so they tried to insert it?s disks into the shell of another HD. Needless to say, that didn't work...

Luckily your HD wasn't that far gone... :wink:

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Create-ivity - a game development blog

Fortunately not! :smile: I've managed to get at the my documents folder via Ubuntu, although it only worked on the first attempt. The second attempt seemed to crash it. Nevertheless, I managed to recover most files. The problem is then getting them out of Linux - NTFS writing in Ubuntu is a bit of a nightmare when the repositories won't play ball.

But, I'm pretty much done here. The Fujitsu drive is working for the moment (although when it was on FAT32 it insisted on splitting itself into two partitions for no apparent reason). Once again, thanks very much for the help guys.

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If you need to recover your HD try NTphoenix, its a good recovery program despite it not working on my last nackered drive, but that was a drive beyond almost even being sent off to be recovered, and supprisingly the BIOS couldn't spot the drive but that program could.

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-[Better to be Honest than Kind]-