Dell XPS M1530 wont startup, hard drive dead, retreiving data....

willyg

willyg

willyg

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Im not particularly clued up on computer hardware and am quite a beginner with this kind of thing hence why ive come for some advice, il explain as best i can...

i have a dell xps m1530 had it fro two yrs and its out of warranty and the other day i turned it on and the very first 'dell' startup happened but then after that it just went to one of the feared black screens with only the cursor flashing in the top left hand corner, and that is as far as we can get with it, it wont boot or run safe mode or anything.

ive had it at a computer shop and they have told me its the hard drive failing for £15, and they have managed to recover the data but they are wanting/holding it hostage for £59 and im trying what i can before having to pay that.

Now so far we have managed (we means me and a friend that knows a lot more about computers than me) to view a screen that shows the four partitions and how much info they have on... the partition which should hold all my information is showing up as empty but i am told by the shop that this is because the drive is corrupt and it will show as empty... we have also managed to install another OS onto the partition that holds my info and run it and then view my hard drive (saying this implies that the hard drive works, which it does, but its on its way out and this same thing will happen again soon enoug i am told) which also shows up as empty... but i am assured by the shop that my information is still on there and they have not formatted it.

so i am wondering if anyone has any ideas about how to get the information off of it? i have been told knoppix might be something to try but i know nothing about it as yet... anything else to try?

thanks in advance for any help:D
 
o and i know i will have to replace the hard drive after this... and have been reading up on ssd's and a couple of questions...
i would like a 120/128gb one, whats the best and cheapest option available? can i get one under £200?
is it worth getting one now? or shall i just fit a cheapy 64gb sata one and use that for a yr or so and wait until the prices come down?
will it be able to fit straight into my laptop which has been run with a 250gb sata one so far? or do i need some extra adapters or anything? or do you need more information to tell me that?
is it worth getting windows 7 for these, as iv read they work best with this os?
will ineed to configure anything on my laptop to have it running well or will it just sit straight in?
thanks!!
 
Have you got another computer? If so you could take the drive out and attach it to the other computer and try and get the data off that way. Your other option is USB caddy. Get yourself a new drive for the laptop install windows and then put the old drive in the caddy to retrieve the program. The caddy's are normally about £10

With regards to SSD, I bought a OCZ solid 2 120gb. Its a fantastic drive with 220/120 read/writes, supports trim and has decent small file writes. It cost me about £230.
 
If you did find a 100GB+ SSD for under £200 it would be popular. The best I've seen was Intel 80GB that was just under that budget.

I personally would look at 64GB size simply because of price. As I would want a longer warranty than 2 years if paying in the hundreds of pounds. Saying that when I was looking the Crucial CT64M225 (5 year warranty) could be had for around £100 late 2009, and now its £140-160 range.

Got to consider the age of the chipset in the Dell too, which I think uses ICH8controller. Not sure if TRIM works on earlier ICH versions, but probably not a factor for you if running XP or Vista.
 
ninja... i think i see what you are saying... the problem is that the information is not showing when yuo search for it though? if i did that would i be able to solve that? or do i need some form of software to retreive it?
bane... if thats the case then i would possibly be willing to spend a bit more... as 64gb i dont think wuold be enough as once os is on and the programs i use are on there wouldnt be much room... e.g. i use photoshop cs3, autoCAD, archiCAD and a few games which i imagine would take up plenty of space...
what would be the best 120/128gb ssd value/performance wise?
cheers
 
when you say the info isnt showing, have you already tried the drive in another machine or is this just when you managed to get into the OS?

There is plenty of software you can get that will allow you to recover software off a corrupt hard disk. I bought some for work recently and it was about $20.

Also with regards to SSD, I would recommend stretching to the £220 or so for a 120gig, 60gig is nothing by the time you have the OS on there.
 
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