Major Hard Drive Problem....

tomw92

tomw92

tomw92

Associate
Joined
14 Sep 2008
Posts
202
Location
Keeping 'er Country!
Ok guys this is a biggie. My mam has had an Advent laptop for a couple of years and never had any problems until 2 days ago. Whilst browsing the web the screen went black and the laptop turned off. Upon a restart we were presented with an error about inserting proper boot device (which obviously was the hard drive). Then when I checked the bios the hard drive wouldn't show up. It did later after a couple of tries though. So I took the drive out of her laptop and stuck it in my desktop to try and salvage some files. The drive shows up in Windows as not having any sort of structure and will not let me access it. I can, however, use recovery software to find files however this has an estimated time of over 200 hours which I don't want to do.....

So my question is this: Is there any possible way of getting the files off the drive? I'm not bothered about keeping the drive afterwards. Just the documents mean a lot to her.

Plus, what is the most powerful recovery software I could use??

Ta in advance!

Forgot to say - what I have recovered has been corrupted (word docs and jpegs)
 
Last edited:
Got no magic that will fix this, but you need to find out whether there was any security settings activated first - possible on a laptop and 'corrupted' might mean the drive contents are encrypted. Look in the BIOS of the laptop.

With that out the way, it's better to try and fix the problem with it fitted to the laptop if you can. If it's not seen in the BIOS then that's bad - not too much you can do. But if it re-appeared as you say then it might have simply been a bad connection. The error message to 'Insert Correct Boot Device' simply means the some part of the boot file system is corrupt/missing - and that is easily fixed using the OS CD-ROM. But not with it plugged into your desktop PC. It's worth trying to fix it in the laptop because the alternative of recovering files might not be successful.

Put it back together, insert the Windows CD, and when it starts choose 'Repair Console'. From the C: prompt type the 2 commands:
fixmbr

followed by:
fixboot

Try to boot the laptop again (without CD) and see what happens.
 
When you say "the documents mean a lot to her," you (and she) really need to decide exactly *how* much... by far the most effective way to rescue the data would be to hand the drive over to a specialist recovery firm. It won't come cheap though - you're talking hundreds at least, and possibly into four figures if you're unlucky.

If you do decide to go down that route, don't mess with the drive any more, every time you power it up you risk making any potential recovery that much harder (and more expensive).

If you're sticking to DIY methods, I've had good results from GetDataBack for NTFS (not free, but widely agreed to be pretty effective), or you could try Recuva, which is freeware. I can't stress enough though, if the data is really valuable (for sentimental or other reasons), you're far better off leaving it to the pros, who will have the necessary tools and the expertise to use them.

Best of luck with it anyway. :)
 
If it was encrypted no data recovery people will be able to rescue the files.
What I'm suggesting is harmless to the data area - file recovery is still possible if thought economic (£500 starting price). It's worth the effort to try simple fixes first.
Yes, there is a small risk that powering it up may result in further damage, but if the data were that valuable a backup would have been nice.
 
Thanks for the replies, i will go and try it back inside the laptop. The documents are mainly photographs of a recently passed away family member and two years worth of University work so yeh I guess its quite important.

I'll let you know my results

The data was backed up to a USB stick apparently, but she lost it at work (school) recently :( )
 
Last edited:
Right, plugged into laptop and did as ChrisLX200 told me to. Forgot to mention that the drive is in two seperate partitions, one is FAT and has some sort of recovery stuff on (advents own and restores to factory) and the other is NTFS. When i try to do FIXMBR and FIXBOOT it does it to the FAT bit and not NTFS.

Any ideas????
 


Here is what I get when I plugged the drive into my pc after I did the fixmbr and fixboot.

Drive V is totally messed up and also is the REOVERY
 
Ah. you didn't say there was more than one partition. However the commands default to the boot (system) partition and you only have one drive in there.
Further details here: http://chara.epfl.ch/~fsalvi/Windows/ntfs_recovery/recconsole2.html

I take it 'Recovery' is the partition containing the manufacturer's defualt install, it looks about the right size. By 'messed up' you mean the contents are unreadable?

Drive V: I also take it was the Windows partition? It says 51.13GB in the map and 10MB in the table at the top. That is bizarre. It's also showing as FAT and not NTFS.

Looks like the partition information is totally screwed - too late to ask if perhaps there was a virus on the machine (did you have current anti-virus software?).

If fixboot and fixmbr failed to repair the drive then it gets too complicated to pursue it further like this. Too many options. So I guess you're reduced to trying to recover your files using software. Recuva works, I use FileRecovery Pro which is slow but thorough.

http://www.lc-tech.com/software/frprodetail.html
 
I Did have current AV installed - Eset Smart Security.

V is the Windows partition

I guessed the partitions were screwed up big time. I guess I'll just recover what I can and hope that all is not lost.

Thanks for all your help!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom