FUCK! There goes another hard drive! HELP!!!!

[mascan42]

My computer suddenly can't access the boot area of my C drive. I tried using my recovery disks, but it doesn't matter. I think the drive is completely shot. The HDD light stays on constantly, but there's no sound or vibration from the disk. I was able to use an old DOS boot disk to look at the directory, and it only shows one 13 MB file with a scrambled filename.

I'm perfectly willing to toss the computer - I was getting ready to do it anyway. But I have some important stuff on there that I hadn't backed up yet. Any ideas about how I can get it working temporarily so I can pull my files off?

[Bill Lehecka]

My computer suddenly can't access the boot area of my C drive. I tried using my recovery disks, but it doesn't matter. I think the drive is completely shot. The HDD light stays on constantly, but there's no sound or vibration from the disk. I was able to use an old DOS boot disk to look at the directory, and it only shows one 13 MB file with a scrambled filename.

I'm perfectly willing to toss the computer - I was getting ready to do it anyway. But I have some important stuff on there that I hadn't backed up yet. Any ideas about how I can get it working temporarily so I can pull my files off?

You could hook up a new hard drive to the computer and make that damaged hard drive a slave of the new hard drive. That way, you can access the Hard Drive without having to boot from it.

[Buster H]

http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

it is expensive, but I have heard INCREDIBLE things about this piece of software. The reviews are soo good that I am half looking forward to having a hard drive crash just so I can see how good it is

[mascan42]

You could hook up a new hard drive to the computer and make that damaged hard drive a slave of the new hard drive. That way, you can access the Hard Drive without having to boot from it.
I tried booting from an XP boot disk, but the drive didn't even show up (my external drive did, though).

[Death Metal Moe]

Daaa DAAA daaa DAA DAAAAAAAAAAAAA

THERE GOES ANOTHER HARD DRIVE!!!!!!

http://www.workhardpr.com/Body%20Count/BodyCount_lg.jpg

[Warfarer]

buy a 3.5" external enclosure for 40 bucks and stick your hard drive in it as an external drive.

[jsc315]

http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

it is expensive, but I have heard INCREDIBLE things about this piece of software. The reviews are soo good that I am half looking forward to having a hard drive crash just so I can see how good it is
Spin rite is excellent. i own a few copies of it my self. I highly recommend it. Honestly there is nothing of its type better out there , Also Backup your data. I reccomend if you get a new Hard drive get external HD. I have a 250Gb external HD and backup everything to it. So if my main drives does go i still have my personally data like photos, videos, porn, and a bunch of other junk. If your to cheap to get a second hard drive Just back your stuff up on DVD's

I wanated to add one last thing that i forgot. Spin Rite can also recover tivo series 1 and 2 hard drives.

[Mommadeez4u]

You can try getting your hands on a Linux operating system like Knoppix. You should be able to boot up from a CD and then dump the contents of your C Drive onto the media of your choice. KNoppix is open source.

[WoodenPlank]

You can try getting your hands on a Linux operating system like Knoppix. You should be able to boot up from a CD and then dump the contents of your C Drive onto the media of your choice. KNoppix is open source.

DING DING DING DING.

Knoppix can also read and write NTFS partitions, boots straight from the CD with no install needed, has built in CD and DVD burning capabilities (if you only have one drive, its safe to remove the knoppix live CD or DVD once its loaded to the desktop), and is pretty easy to use. It has saved my ass on MANY occasions.

[mascan42]

DING DING DING DING.

Knoppix can also read and write NTFS partitions, boots straight from the CD with no install needed, has built in CD and DVD burning capabilities (if you only have one drive, its safe to remove the knoppix live CD or DVD once its loaded to the desktop), and is pretty easy to use. It has saved my ass on MANY occasions.
I already tried this using BartPE, but the drive didn't even appear.

Last night I tried the ol' freezer trick, and this morning it at least showed up, but it didn't appear partitioned.

[Mommadeez4u]

give Knoppix a try, you might be surprised.

[thelord68]

Recover Lost Data (http://www.migosoftware.com/store/recoverlostdata.html)from Migo Software (used to be Stompsoft)

Connect the drive via an external cradle to another computer. As long as the drive is accesible, though not necessarily as a drive letter, you should be able to get a decent amount of data back.

I have used this software to recover data from drives that the big guys like OnTrack said would cost thousands of dollars or were completely unrecoverable.

Spinrite may help as well by repairing the drive.

[Sinn Fein]

Zag posted this before.

Find and download Hiren's Boot CD 9.1

It's a bootable CD.

Use Google, you'll find it.

[Buster H]

Zag posted this before.

Find and download Hiren's Boot CD 9.1

It's a bootable CD.

Use Google, you'll find it.

I "hear" it has a copy of spin rite on it too.

[gleet]

Maybe I'm blind, but how do you download that Hiren's Boot CD? I've looked all over that page and can't spot the secret.

[Sinn Fein]

Use Google and you will find other places to download it.

Spinrite or one of the programs in the recovery section oughta help recover most if not all of your data. Finding a way to keep the drive cool (like maybe putting the drive inside a plastic bag and sitting it on top of an ice pack) will help considerably while you are are trying to recover the drive.

[Balino]

Try out Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery (http://www.stellarinfo.com) Software, worked for me once. It recovers lost, missing, inaccessible or deleted data. This data recovery is powered by ‘Raw File Recovery’ feature that recognizes & recovers more than 300 file types including documents, spreadsheets, web content & images.
Download the demo (http://www.stellarinfo.com/partition-recovery.htm) run the software on different drive by attaching your infected hard drive as slave and scan your drive. If the scan result shows you the preview of of your recoverable data then it means that you can get back your data by getting the full version.

[Sinn Fein]

BTW, I don't think anyone has asked. What kind of drive is it?