fmb

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Yes, my 4.5 year old laptop passed on. It was unable to be revived by several computer paramedics; it was tough watching the beloved with all those cables attached. I'm sure it will move on to some better place.

Last Tuesday, I came home to a black screen with the message, "Disk read error" or some kind of sick BS. The only other screen I could get told me to "insert a bootable disk". Like I know what the hell that means. Heck, most of you know what my comp skills are like.

I just hope my stuff can be retrieved from the hard drive. NO, I NEVER, EVER BACKED THE DAMN THING UP!! I'm about sick that I may not get all my son's pics and the consulting work documents back.

Oh well, it was a tough lesson, but now I can get a computer where the serial number isn't in cuneiform writing....

Right now, I'm using my GF's Dell.

Jackie-0

Well, as long as it can be spun up, you will be able to get the data off. Last week must have been some kind of magnetic storm, because I had a lot of dead hard drives. I was able to save the data off of all of them except my sister's. It was making a clicking sound and would never spin up.

I mourn your loss. Buy and external drive next time and back that shit up.

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licupssy

Don't know what your techno-geeks did but the fact that you got an error indicates your drive wasn't necessarily DOA. You can get this error if one of the windows start up files is corrupted. The bootable disk refereed to is your Windows XP CD.
I had a similar problem about two weeks ago when I accidentally turned the power to the computer off and back on during startup. It was during a thunder storm and I think we had a lightning strike that caused a momentary blackout which cased me to flip the switch.
When you boot from the CD it will create a temporary drive to load the operating system. Once up you should see a line or two about "to repair windows press F6 or R or some other key". Press the key and hopefully it will solve the problem. I can't remember exactly but it my come up with a dos window and prompt when it had repaired Windows. When this came up I removed the CD and restarted the computer and Windows came back up with no problem. I do think I may have had to redo some of my settings to get it back to exactly the way I had it before it went down.
There are other tricks you could try if Windows still won't start. Both of these I've done in the past.
If there was sufficient room on the drive, you could make a new bootable partition and install windows to this partition. Once you recover the files from the partition which wouldn't start, you could resize the new partition and reclaim the space.
Another time one of the sectors of the MBR was permanently damage on one of my drives and the only recourse was to reformatted the drive so that it marked the bad sector(s) and the drive was able to be used again.
If you get a new computer you might want to get USB enclosure for the old drive if it is recoverable. You could reformat it after you got anything you possible could off it and install windows to it so that you could boot from it if you have a problem with your on-board drive.

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I solemnly swear that I am up to no good! ~~~SWTWC

yellowfish

Dude go buy a 2.5" exterior hard drive case
install your hard drive into it
plug it into a USB plug of a working PC

if it works then you got your documents
and you have a "new exterior drive"

PS what licu said should work
but sometimes mistakes happen when you install over an installed operating system
so if you do this back it up first

fmb

The guys tried a few things, but none seemed to work correctly. At one point, the comp started up and everything looked fine, but they were unable to get the USB ports operable to move the data. Hell, they even tried accessing the material via their wireless network and moving my stuff that way. Even that didn't work.

I'm damn sure gonna back up my data. I know I should've, but this has really driven me to get something up and running!

Jackie-0

Pull the hard drive out. Connect it to a regular PC with a IDE connection. Because it's a 2.5 GB drive, you will need to buy a little connector. Or you can just pay Best Buy $75 to get your data.

USB external drive thing rarely works on dying hard drive. Trust me, this is what I do for a living.

Then buy a new HD for your laptop and reinstall Windows. But that data is only going to be accessed from another PC and not your original laptop.

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elfoozo

When you get tired of messing around with novice repair shops failing to recover your data, send it to a professional shop:

http://www.aerodr.com/

licupssy

Depends what they checked to see why the USB and network connection wouldn't work. That could be as simple as a missing driver or firewall blocking the connection.

If the disk error has been cleared and the computer comes up in windows you could check the USB port status through the control panel and see if everything is kosher. If your laptop has a burner and windows comes up, you could try burning the files to a CD or DVD.

Otherwise, if you don't want to take the chance of accidentally wipe the files from the drive, you have the choice of trying the enclosure as per tigerland or if you have access to a desktop computer, the cable Jackie-O mentioned is fairly cheap.

I wouldn't chuck the drive if you get the data off it per Jackie-O suggestion. I'm not privy to the failure rate of laptop hard drive as Jackie-O is being the Maytag repairwoman of computers. She most likely sees them drop left and right. I have the education and electronic experience to know what she says would most likely be true if the drive is failing due to a component or motor. A laptop may not have enough wattage to handle something like that on it's USB port. I may have been lucky but in 15 years of building and repairing my own computers of the 6 to 10 hard drives I've had the only reason I've replaced one is due to it's size. The only failure was new and DOA. So I'd pop for the enclosure and try it. You can get one one line pretty cheap. And If you buy a new drive for you present computer, you could yank it out and use the enclosure with it when you replace the computer.

___________________________________________

I solemnly swear that I am up to no good! ~~~SWTWC

adrenaline

that sucks man. my wife makes be back up our pictures every time we unload the camera to the pc. a lot of extra work, but those are the things we really don't want to lose. I hope you get your stuff back!

fmb

Tomorrow, I'm checking with a buddy that's doing something similar to what ya'll are recommending. He says the data will be transferred to a DVD so I can easily transfer it to my GF's comp; I had about 26 gigs worth of things on the old hard drive. When I leave his house, I'm heading out to buy an external hard drive to use for my backup.

Hell, I might even bust all out and snatch one of the teraflop hard drives.....

licupssy

I'd buy two 500GB, a back up for the backup.

___________________________________________

I solemnly swear that I am up to no good! ~~~SWTWC

yellowfish

i r also a techie
worked for me

fmb

Never can be too safe, can we?? I am purchasing a 500GB for my backup. Right now, the prices are dirt cheap!

licupssy

Were you able to get your computer back up or atleast get your data off it?

___________________________________________

I solemnly swear that I am up to no good! ~~~SWTWC