Laptop not booting,hard drive has multiple damaged sectors, trying to recover data!

Mad Badger

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As above - stepsons laptop won't boot, Dell diagnostics shows multiple damaged sectors which can't be read.

Could I remove the drive, put it in a caddy of some kind to act as an external HDD & try to read the disk from another windows 7 machine?

I love Xmas hols & college deadlines, he hadn't backed up any of his work..........:shake:
 
Unfortunately, taking the hdd out of the machine wont make any difference, if you need to recover data, you might need to send to a data recovery place, once a hdd gets damage sectors, its on its way out.
 
Yes.

You'll also be able to run recovery software with it in a caddy. Edit - you could also put it inside a desktop machine as a second drive of course.

One other thing you could try if the laptop had a CD drive is to boot from a Linux ubuntu disc. Pretty easy to use, does not install to HDD and supports usb so you can plug in a backup drive and copy stuff off the HDD if its readable.
 
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you could download something like bartPE or ultimate boot disk and get a chkdsk run with the /R switch to try and map the bad sectors.

or what robert said, get it in a caddy or inside a desktop PC. first off run a chkdsk with a /R switch then try accessing the data normally or using a data recovery package.

either way when youre done replace the disk.
 
Thanks all, have just got back from PC world with a 2.5" caddy, will try to see the disk & then try running recovery software

:thumbs:
 
Mad Badger said:
@neil_g does bartPE work with windows 7?
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Yes, but you will need to make the cd yourself using your Win7 installation media.

If the need arose, I'd use a Ubuntu Live cd. Easy to download a ready made ISO from Distrowatch.com. Contrary to the Microsoft myth, windows drives can be read by many other operating systems.
 
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I love Dell, we have no windows 7 installation media as it was on the corrupted HDD, I know , I should have created a "rescue disk" or whatever they call it.

BTW have connected the ailing hdd to the 2.5" caddy - can't read the disk as it's not formatted!! Bum.

ANyone out there think that the Ubuntu boot option will work if the disk can't be recognised?

Help!
 
PaulF said:
Yes, but you will need to make the cd yourself using your Win7 installation media.

If the need arose, I'd use a Ubuntu Live cd. Easy to download a ready made ISO from Distrowatch.com. Contrary to the Microsoft myth, windows drives can be read by many other operating systems.
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read and written to. even OSX can without the need for extra software :)
 
Mad Badger said:
I love Dell, we have no windows 7 installation media as it was on the corrupted HDD, I know , I should have created a "rescue disk" or whatever they call it.

BTW have connected the ailing hdd to the 2.5" caddy - can't read the disk as it's not formatted!! Bum.

ANyone out there think that the Ubuntu boot option will work if the disk can't be recognised?

Help!
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It may do, you could try some data recovery software too (Windows or Linux). They tend to read the disk sector by sector irrespective of whether it is reported as formatted or not, the disk needs to be 'seen' by the BIOS though.
I've used File Scavenger in the past with decent results, I'm sure others could recommend other software too.
 
Currently running Photorec, which at least is reading the disk sector by sector, might take 10hrs though on this 750Gb disk!

fingers crossed
 
Yeah looking like 24 hrs now :(

Dell have at least agreed to warranty the machine, bought it reconditioned off ebay: ecomputers, nice laptop, just wish teenagers wouldn't drop them onto the pavement.
 
Cool, hope the recovery goes well.

On a side note, according to a Dell training instructor I had many years ago, Dell employed a bloke to 'drop test' laptops from the top of a pair of step ladders as part of their US military quality control! could be rubbish but made an interesting distraction on the course I was doing.
 
Recovery is going ok, but slow, well, free software, grateful for anything!

Interesting to hear about the drop test, I reckon this laptop has had multiple drop tests & kicks & dents & scratches, my 6 yr old machine looks brand new compared with his 4 month old one!

Recovered 71 doc files, hopefully some are college work.
 
I faced a similar thing a few months back when my laptop suffered an impact. I lost a number of sectors on the disk, but having OS on the C: partition and data on the D: partition it was only the OS partition that was borked, and then only a bit. I did start running repair software, but it looked like taking forever and I knew I was never going to feel confident in the disk again I decided it was getting the heave-ho. I pulled everything off the D: drive as insurance, but I had all my data backed up on a USB drive as well so it was no drama to buy a new drive and rebuild it from backups.

FWIW I have all my documents and processed photos (not original raws) stored on Dropbox - about 6GB in total - so they are always backed up off site in real time even if my laptop becomes toast or gets nicked. In addition to that I have a 1TB USB 3.0 drive on site, which I use to take periodic backups of everything important, including original raw files and my Lightroom catalogue and ancillary files.

Stuff like this makes you appreciate the sense of having backups. All it takes is a drop, a spilt drink, hardware failure or a sticky fingered villain to make your data vanish. If it matters to you why would you not have it backed up?
 
@Tim: I used to partition my drive in the days of xp, I didn't do so with my stepson's laptop, wish I had now, but as Neil said it still would leave me stuffed in this situation! I've just started using drop box thanks to my new phone having it pre installed, btw found 3 files relating to college so far but could be 4 days to check the whole disk! Bring it on
 
@Neil - True, but a hardware issue would not take out a backup! :)

Nonetheless, I always keep data separated from OS, even if only by partitioning on one drive, so that in the event that the OS gets stuffed by some sort of ugly infestation, rather than hardware failure, I can freely wipe it and rebuild whilst leaving my data intact. It's all part of good (IMHO) data husbandry.
 
Just need to persuade teenagers that **** does happen, the usual response is that it'll be ok, I cannot be there nagging all the time to prompt to back up, so here I am, still up keeping an eye on things, rant over, actually I'm watching train spotting ;-) your advice is honestly appreciated
 
Mad Badger said:
Just need to persuade teenagers that **** does happen, the usual response is that it'll be ok, I cannot be there nagging all the time to prompt to back up, so here I am, still up keeping an eye on things, rant over, actually I'm watching train spotting ;-) your advice is honestly appreciated
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Totally agree, my niece used to keep all her university work on a usb stick, it only took one failure of the stick for her to realize that uncle Paul was talking sense after all and she backed everything up multiple times after that :thumbs:

The recovery may speed up towards the end when it gets to empty sectors, hopefully, in the meantime plenty of brews!
 
Well I recovered 103 word files, some were relevant, most not......he's gonna be in the **** when college restarts - feel a bit guilty about not insisting on regular backups, lessons learnt for both of us.

Photorec is good stuff!
 
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When recovering data its better if the drive is connected to ide or sata ports.

Some free software you can try -

Recuva
Testdisc

Paid but affordable -

R-Studio
 
Thanks, tried recuva, didn't see the disk unlike photo rec, my old Dell has no sata ports either! Laptop now awaiting Dell to replace the hard drive
 
You'd be silly not to have your smaller items like coursework/documents/accounts backed up to SkyDrive/DropBox or any one of the free cloud sync services out there. Takes a couple of minutes to setup and zero maintenance....just make sure you use a strong,unique password...preferably a 2-factor auth if the service offers it.

I've used EasyRecovery Pro to pull data off knackered disks before....with a pretty good success rate.
 
when i was at uni i backed up on three seperate disks just in case - although one girl lost her entire years work because she did'nt back up -

steve i'm sure i've got some recovery software if i can find it i'll give you a shout.
 
I consider myself quite fortunate that I started to "learn" computers in the early 90s.

My old IT teacher (who I bump into regularly down the pub) drilled into us the importance of regularly saving your work with incremental filenames and backing up. The main reason was that our school network was so unreliable it would regularly wig out! :lol:

Generally speaking, computers are much more stable now but they still go wrong, people seem to be lulled into a false sense of security. There was also a story in the local rag about someone being burgled and having their laptop stolen which contained 3 years worth of Uni coursework.

With the cost of memory sticks and external HDDs I don't understand why people don't back up and keep a "secure" copy away from their machine :shrug:

Unless you're storing loads of photos, a 16GB/32GB memory stick will cost around £10 and 500GB HDDs can be had for around £40 now..... seems like a small price to pay for irreplaceable work.

I have my photo library in 4 seperate locations, 3 of them off of my laptop and one of those is kept in a safe at my parents' house.

Paranoid......... Definitely :lol: But there's no way I could replace 14 years worth of photos.
 
Thanks Dexter, have recovered most of his work, now on usb as well, trying to persuade him to get drop box, you can lead a teenager to water....etc!
 
Mad Badger said:
Yeah looking like 24 hrs now :(

Dell have at least agreed to warranty the machine, bought it reconditioned off ebay: ecomputers, nice laptop, just wish teenagers wouldn't drop them onto the pavement.
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Aah was about to post that unlike in your earlier post dell usually do supply physical media as well as a recovery image on the drive, however it appears from the above your issue would be with the refurbers not dell as it was they that failed to supply you the disks not dell as you complained of.
Hth.
 
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