Hard Drive Recovery Help

burrellsjeep

burrellsjeep

Breaking Stuff...
Joined
Nov 19, 2008
Location
Morganton NC
So my Hard Drive took a crap. It started freezing up and now it will not allow windows to boot. While booting an error states the HDD is about to die and needs to be replaced.

Any one got any suggestions for getting my pictures off the Drive, This is our main computer and has the last five years worth of pics on it. I can boot to recovery console but it will not allow me to back up the picture folder, it errors when I attempt it.

Its a SATA Drive, Do you think I can slave it to another Computer and at least pull the pictures? Thats my plan unless anyone else has any ideas.
 
Download a copy/image of RIPLinuX. Burn to a CD and boot with that CD. If the hard drive is still readable, you can recover your data.
 
Freezing up as in stops Spinning? Or Freezing as in software?

If the HD is clicking or stops spinning, try freezing it overnight. Then reinstall and run it while its still cold. Has worked for me before

If its software 'freezing', could just be Windows itself. Prob corrupt Boot files. I have this same situation on my main Computer and it was suggested that my best bet for recovering data would be to install a software upgrade. Apparently this would overwrite bad files and is much cheaper than reinstalling the entire OS. (Of course this would only apply if you have Vista or older!)

Would like to know how it goes!
 
ol'Jeeps said:
If the HD is clicking or stops spinning, try freezing it overnight. Then reinstall and run it while its still cold. Has worked for me before
Click to expand...

Yeah, this can work if it's a mechanical failure.

If the drive is more than 3yrs old, just get a new one regardless. Reinstall windows, then put the old drive back in as a secondary drive and see what you can copy off. Probably start with ol'Jeeps freezer trick.

And for you and anybody else reading this... buy a second drive. Make at least two copies of everything.
 
Thanks Guys,

The drive would freeze up it self, as in you couldnt hear it spinning and the HDD lite goes a dim solid. Which sometimes resulted in the software freezing or I guess you would say the system would respond, moose moves but nothning works. I am going to send it to a friend (that does PC work) that has offered to look at for me. Hopefully he can do something with it.

Its windows Vista Home Prem, I do not have a windows disc, HP loads the disc as a second partition on the drive and I failed to burn a recovery disc :shaking:
 
if the disk is completely fubar'ed there are a few companies you can ship the drive to and they ship you a new drive with the data on it. not for the faint of pocketbook (i can find out from my dad who had to have a usb disk recovered after moving it spinning -- had 28years of work on it.)
 
Keep it simple

Go buy a Hard Drive reader, they sell one that can read IDE and Sata or a dock that reads only sata. they dont cost much at all. put the hard drive in it, hook up to another working computer. let it autoplay or go to my computer open up which ever drive letter it chooses. Open it up then do the Following:
Depending on your Version of Windows it will either be "documents and settings" or "users." if its D&S the next folder you click on is "users." then choose the user you use I.E. your name. do no look under "all users" or administrator, it wont be there. the you should see all the tipical folders, desktop, favorites, pictures, music, etc....

If the Hard Drive is completely ruined, you are screwed unless you take it to a data recovery shop and hope they can retrieve it
 
P.s.

If you are able to read the data yourself, you can probably just do the recovery partition, and it will fix the HDD errors you are have, after you back up your data to another computer or externall HDD. We get "hard drive bad" errors alot that only need a inplace reinstall or complete reinstall of the OS. So good luck
 
update

Sent the drive to a GubNi who has a computer shop, after a few attempts he was able to recover my pictures (60 gigs worth), he stated it was an internal failure in the drive. I owe him big for this, these were all of the pictures from the last 6 years which were all the pictures of our sons other than whats been uploaded and printed. The wife is very happy. I can't thank him enough. i will definitely be backing up this new hard drive.

Thanks again
 
Awesome. Glad to hear it.

Now make AT LEAST two copies of everything important. I'd suggest even buying a spare external, backing everything up to it, then taking it to someone else's house for safe keeping. You can also subscribe for an online backup service, but make sure you know what you're getting for your money. Some services will have backup "history", so you can recover a lost file, others do not.
 
On a related note - what are opinions on the various online backup services? Its seems for only $5-8 /month like a pretty good idea.
 
Burn a copy of "Puppy" Linux or Obuntu on a cd and run it.
I did this and it worked quite well for retrieving my files. I've got a copy if you cannot get one burnt.
 
mudonthetires10 said:
Burn a copy of "Puppy" Linux or Obuntu on a cd and run it.
I did this and it worked quite well for retrieving my files. I've got a copy if you cannot get one burnt.
Click to expand...

His HD was physically failing. It would stop spinning after a few minutes or lock up the whole computer, but I think I got all the info he needed off of it. He should have it back by now.

:D
 
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