Hard Drive crashed, what can I do?

[Performance RC]

The hard drive in my lap-top crashed last night, it had some very important files in it. I was wondering if anyone knows how to retraive the files off of it?

[Silmaril8n]

Whenever tha happens to me the first thing I do is use a bootable OS like Knoppix and see if I can read any of the files before. If not, then your options are quite limited and data retrieval can be expensive!

[Viper007Bond]

It depends what's wrong with the drive, but you're probably screwed unless you want to have the data recovered professional, which as Silmaril8n said, is expensive.

Is it clicking or what?

[Performance RC]

Its just 100% dead. Dell says its dead. It doesnt work at all. It doesnt start up, just the start up window then an error message.

[Silmaril8n]

Whats the error? Disk Boot Failure? If Windows is hosed then you may be able to access the drive using a bootable OS like I described earlier.

[Tammy]

Your boot files may have become corrupted. If nothing else is working, and as a last resort, try reinstalling Windows. Then, if that works, there is software out there that can read files even from before you reinstalled Windows. But you probably won't get back all of your files, just some of them.

I had a hard drive go Kaput once in a desktop. The reason was because the circuit board burned out (lucky guess on my part) apparently due to a power surge or something like that. It wasn't moving at all, dead, gone, bury it. I had the usual "irreplaceable" files on it. So, I went out and bought the exact same drive (fortunately they were still for sale down at the local store) and switched out the board from the new drive. Drive booted right up and I got all my files.

Very frustrating, I know. If you have to go to a professional, it will cost you hundreds of dollars, btw.


Good luck.

[Silmaril8n]

Yeah - I think they charge per byte recovered. So... it's probably not an option. You were making backups right? ;)

[Whiteknight]

people, I can't stress this point enough: Keep backup copies of everything that is important to you. It's far too tempting to blindly rely on technology and assume your data will last forever, but wake up. even though magnetic drives are referred to as "permanent" or "long-term" storage, it is important to remember that ALL MEMORY DEVICES SHOULD BE CONSIDERED VERY VOLATILE.

here are a few general points to remember:
1) harddrives have moving parts that take considerable amounts of damage through years of motion and heat. windows and linux both make use of "swap partitions" to buffer semi-current memory, and this can increase load on a drive, rotations, and heat. do not store "important" data on the drive with the primary swap partition. Also, look for drives with lower RPMs (lower RPM == less heat and friction), and with ventilation.

2) flash memory has no moving parts, but can be damaged by excessive read/write cycles.

3) CDs and DVDs get scratched easily, floppies are subject to bending and magnetic interference.

4) external HDDs often dont get enough ventilation, and often times read/write buffering can be out of sync between fast reading on the head, and slow output (USB2.0 or firewire still arent fast enough). this can put extra strain on the motors between read/write cycles.

so remember, every form of data storage has a weakness.

[iDxMan]

Everyone needs a good `HDD crash without backup' lesson. :)

Out of 26 HDD's in our IBM server, I think about 23 of them have been replaced in the last 3 years.. Sure, RAID helps, but we've had to pull from backups too.

-r

[Viper007Bond]

*gets scared and goes to find his spool of DVD-R's so he can start burning stuff*

Running outta space anyway. I only have like 30 GB free outta 700. :(

[f-stop]

Man, this is a biggie in my job. (photographer) We double or triple back up stuff. You don't even want to think about the consequences of losing someones images from say, a wedding. Does the term Irreplaceable come to mind?

Good reminder. I think we all need to hear this again, every so often.......