Dropped Laptop... Windows 7 not booting

IggyStooge · 9 Feb 2019 at 14:56

Hello everyone,

A mate messaged me saying he'd dropped his Laptop, has not been able to boot into Windows 7 since and would I have a look at it. It landed bottom side down so I guess the HDD would have felt the impact more. Unfortunately he's got music on it that he doesn't have backed up and needs access to it in about 3 weeks time.

Laptop still powers up and displays the Windows Error Recovery screen. Startup repair or normal startup don't complete when run. I can get into BIOS. I've taken the Hard drive out and tried connecting it to my Windows 10 PC. When I connect the drive I get the sound that it's been connected but no hard drive appears.

I'm no expert but is there anything I can try to at least try to save the contents of the drive. It's a Toshiba 320GB HDD about 10 years old I'm told.

I'd appreciate any advice you can offer.

Thank you.

Iggystooge

Delvis · 9 Feb 2019 at 15:32

Plug it in as you did, fire up test disk and do some reading.

You may get lucky, just don't write anything to the drive yet

I presume you've tried safe mode also

IggyStooge · 9 Feb 2019 at 16:26

I tried safe mode but the HDD didn't appear. I've downloaded test disk. Do I want to analyse first?

Rannoch · 9 Feb 2019 at 16:31

Data recovery company if required. He has a backup yes?

IggyStooge · 9 Feb 2019 at 16:33

No backup up of anything on that HDD.

Rannoch · 9 Feb 2019 at 16:39

Does the disk appear in Disk Manager?

IggyStooge · 9 Feb 2019 at 17:09

Vargas said:
Does the disk appear in Disk Manager?

No it doesn't but it was in the hard drive list in BIOS.

Delvis · 9 Feb 2019 at 17:19

IggyStooge said:
I tried safe mode but the HDD didn't appear. I've downloaded test disk. Do I want to analyse first?

If you quote people they get the notification

Yeah I believe so, been an age since I used it.

Eventually you scan the drive, sometimes a deep scan,but at some point it may have an option to List Files, think it's P or L, can't remember but it tells you on the screen

Just don't do anything if it mentions formatting or anything

IggyStooge · 9 Feb 2019 at 17:22

Delvis said:
If you quote people they get the notification

Yeah I believe so, been an age since I used it.

Eventually you scan the drive, sometimes a deep scan,but at some point it may have an option to List Files, think it's P or L, can't remember but it tells you on the screen

Just don't do anything if it mentions formatting or anything

Right. I'll try it. Thanks.

EsaT · 9 Feb 2019 at 17:44

IggyStooge said:
It's a Toshiba 320GB HDD about 10 years old I'm told.

So likely already some wear from all trhose years and then getting shock from dropping.
Not likely that great chances for getting data out of it with home methods.

I guess at least it wasn't running when having date with Mr. Gravity and Floor.
If it was then it likely has major problems.

IggyStooge · 9 Feb 2019 at 20:34

Delvis said:
If you quote people they get the notification

Yeah I believe so, been an age since I used it.

Eventually you scan the drive, sometimes a deep scan,but at some point it may have an option to List Files, think it's P or L, can't remember but it tells you on the screen

Just don't do anything if it mentions formatting or anything

Doing a scan but it's just saying read error as far as I can tell.

Delvis · 9 Feb 2019 at 22:41

IggyStooge said:
Doing a scan but it's just saying read error as far as I can tell.

Yeah just leave it be, see what it does. I've had to leave a drive scanning for four hours or so before it was that knackered and wiped

Delvis · 9 Feb 2019 at 22:42

What might happen is it may ask if you want to copy files after you list them,so make sure you have space available

IggyStooge · 10 Feb 2019 at 16:21

Delvis said:
What might happen is it may ask if you want to copy files after you list them,so make sure you have space available

I've not had that option yet, but I'll try again before I give up.

Delvis · 10 Feb 2019 at 16:22

IggyStooge said:
I've not had that option yet, but I'll try again before I give up.

So what is it doing? You may need to do a deep scan

PiKe · 10 Feb 2019 at 16:25

Should clonezilla it straight away, all further use will reduce the likelihood of retrieving any data.

Delvis · 10 Feb 2019 at 16:36

PiKe said:
Should clonezilla it straight away, all further use will reduce the likelihood of retrieving any data.

I've never had issues using test disk, but it's upto the op I guess

PiKe · 10 Feb 2019 at 16:37

Delvis said:
I've never had issues using test disk, but it's upto the op I guess

If you use clonezilla, any readable sectors will be duplicated, that way you can use test disk to your heart's content on the clone without being concerned about it stopping altogether.

Hades · 10 Feb 2019 at 16:54

Try booting the PC into a Linux live distro on a USB stick and see whether it can read any files. Linux is great at reading most filesystems and doing it this way reduces dependence on the whole filesystem working. However it does sound like the actual HDD is damaged so it may not help much.

Similar to using clonezilla you can also use Linux to perform a bitwise copy of the data on the drive onto a new drive to preserver what can be read.

Although I've not used them here are some links to various Linux data recorvery tools:

https://www.ubuntupit.com/top-15-linux-data-recovery-tools-the-professionals-choice/

IggyStooge · 12 Feb 2019 at 19:42

PiKe said:
If you use clonezilla, any readable sectors will be duplicated, that way you can use test disk to your heart's content on the clone without being concerned about it stopping altogether.

With clonezilla do I need i686 architecture with my i7 CPU. The Laptop was AMD.