Dead Hard-disk on XPS

Raz · 8 Mar 2009 at 14:35

Hello all

A few days a ago my dell xps 1530 froze while browsing the net and then wouldn't restart. After running the diagnostics it seems the hdd is failing or dead (I get a 2000-0146 error and the SMART short test fails too).

I'm hoping Dell will replace the drive as I've only had it 5 months now but is there anyway of getting the data back? There's some confidential data on there, and data I liked to save - is there anyway of getting into Windows long enough to make a backup of everything (or image etc)?

thanks!

Raz

edit - uh probably in the wrong forum. But is this common on the XPS?

Raz · 8 Mar 2009 at 21:13

Ok, thanks for the replies. I'll have to connect it to my desktop to see if I can recover any files.

Raz · 10 Mar 2009 at 23:06

I've managed to connect the laptop hd to my desktop but can't see most of the files - it's showing 2gb free and 500mb used but there's only about 700mb of data on there!

Plus, the actual size of the partition is around 260gb so that's missing/corrupted too.

hmm...

Raz · 15 Mar 2009 at 17:17

just a quick update - I tried that program and it seemed to take ages getting past the initial analysis. At the next stage there were a whole load of bad sectors and after about 6% the program just crashed. Guess it's dead then.

Raz · 16 Mar 2009 at 19:54

thanks for the replies.

Dell want me to format it and re-install Windows. I'm getting another harddrive for the laptop and I'm going to install windows on that. I'll have Dell replace their drive and use it as a backup