HDD Bad Sectors, vista wont boot...

davestar_delux · 15 Apr 2008 at 13:45

As title really, I can send the laptop back and they will replace it but was hoping I could recover some data off it first as it's only a handful of bad sectors, is this possible? How should I go about it, I have a USB HDD but it's getting access to stuff, will chucking the Vista disk in bring something up that can let me access or recover the OS?

IAmATeaf · 15 Apr 2008 at 15:10

Find out what make the HDD is and then go to the makers website and see if they do any utils. I had a similar problem with my rig, got onto Seagates website and downloaded SeaTools, ran it off a floppy but they do a boot CD-ROM version, did a full scan and it found 3 bad sectors which it fixed, PC booted up fine and then did a full backup to get all my data off, luckily for me the bad sectors seem to cover the internet temp files so nothing was lost but was a scare all in all as I hadn't done a backup for months and stood to get a large moaning from from the family for losing all their pics and music.

davestar_delux · 15 Apr 2008 at 23:02

Any other ways, would a Linux CD be able to access the NTFS and move stuff to my external USB HDD?

m4cc45 · 16 Apr 2008 at 08:06

If you google:

USB 2.0 IDE & SATA Cable (With Power Supply) you'll find a device that, suprisingly you can attach any IDE (2.5" / 3.5" / SATA) to a different computer via the USB port. They cost around £15 and are a very useful investment.

Once that's done it's easy enough to copy the data off on to that computer. You will need to remove the hard-drive from the laptop first though (easy enough really usually one maybe two screws - just make sure it doesn't invalidate the warranty - i.e. no warranty stickers there).

M.