Hard Drive Crash - tech help

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   readytoescapeposted 14 years ago

   The hard drive on my laptop completely crashed the other day and will not boot up at all. Is there a way to connect to another computer (Desk Top) to retrieve data from the C drive. All my HP backup and research was on this computer. HELP.

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   1. 71

      sunforgedposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      what do you mean by completely crashed?
      
      How does your computer perform on boot, at what point does it stall or freeze, what error message , BSOD, etc. do you get?
      
      data recovery is very expensive
      
      If you really are at a hardware malfunction level (what behaviors led up to the issue? any noisy fans , unusual boot processes, unscheduled shut downs? noisy disk?)
      
      i would try the freezer trick before paying for anything
      
      http://lifehacker.com/170257/macgyver-t … he-freezer

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2. 59

   visitmaniacposted 14 years ago

   If it was a complete crash it means the reader head of your hard drive crashed into the CD disks that make up the hard drive. You would need to replace the reader head but I am not even sure if that is possible.
   
   You might be able to do this, If you have another pc. Change your hard drive if its an older type to be the slave drive. Plug it in with the PC thats working so it now has 2 hard drives. From there boot up the system and click on my computer. See if you now have a drive D: or a second hard drive found and if you can get access to the files that way. That would be a quick test to see if the hard drive truly crash or if its just some boot files missing.

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3. 68

   Jeffrey Nealposted 14 years ago

   You may need a professional's help with this.  Possibly a local PC repair store may help, but if not there are places you can send your hard drive to to get the data off of it if it is valuable.  Google data recovery to get started.  Hope it gets worked out.  Everyone needs a good backup plan, and regularly.

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4. 61

   Mr.Feelgoodposted 14 years ago

   if your hard disk crashed , then its better to get it replaced as soon as possible because no matter what ever recovery technique u try it wont be of any use...It may recover well but let me tell u dat its only for a short period..very soon u'll find the same thing happening again n again..so i would recommend u to get a new HARD DISK !!!!!! thanx

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5. 60

   readytoescapeposted 14 years ago

   I was on with manufacturers tech support and they actually trashed it completely, when I called it was trying to boot up saying that windows loading failed, then when I checked the self testing logs it reported a registry failure. Now after their help, its just black screen, after a few F key hits to the bios systems diagnostics page the error message says “Hard Drive Failure”. They are sending me a new hard drive and boot disk but I’d like to. If possible, recover the data. I was thinking that maybe as suggested I could as a second drive. Can it be connected via USB to another computer?
   
   Sorry about the long response time to your efforts to help, I had to go out.

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   1. 60

      PB_Smithposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      In answer to your original question, yes you can try to retrieve the data. They sell adapters to connect SATA,2.5" & 3.5" IDE thru USB. You may also need an adapter for power.
      
      If you can't retrieve the data through windows you can try something like Ghost or Acronis as they can copy the drive sector by sector.
      If it will spin up then you may be in luck.

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6. 60

   gramsmithposted 14 years ago

   If your hard disk crashed and you want to recover your precious data from your hard disk then you can use SPWDR (Stellar Phoenix window data recovery).With the help of this software your problem will be solve.You can find this software below:-
   
   http://www.stellarinfo.com/partition-recovery.htm

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7. 59

   technocratesposted 14 years ago

   Your hard disk crashes...In that case you require some data recovery software or you need help from some experts to recover data from your crashed hard disk...You will definitely get some help from here: http://www.supportdock.com/
   
   Good luck & Mary Christmas.

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8. 0

   mtsi1098posted 14 years ago

   there is a device called black box which allows many hard drives connections and can connect to another computer via USB port...If memory serves, the device costs around $50 USD...You can pull the drive and attach it to the device to see if it is still readable

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9. 50

   curioxatposted 14 years ago

   If you get to the stage again where you are able to see and access your desktop I would advise running a scan of your hardware to diagnosis any virus/ corrupted file issues. Reimage have worked for me in the past.

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