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

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?

IggyStooge · 9 Feb 2019 at 16:33

No backup up of anything on that HDD.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

IggyStooge · 12 Feb 2019 at 19:45

PiKe said:
Yes.

Thanks