Data recovery

[LexiGirl75]

I had this problem happen with my very first pc (we know how precious the first is). Someone hipped me to data recovery possibilities through CompUSA burning my hard drive to CD-R's for me. So, I am thinking Geek Squad at Best Buy could be a good lead.

I still need to do this, with that drive I've held on to for like 5yrs or so. Can you ask them if they still have Drivespace for me please?

 

[Ender]

Oi vey..

The biggest problem with Data Recovery (Data Mining, depending on how severe the damage is to the hard drive) is that it's incredibly expensive. Do not ever trust Geek Squad/Best Buy to recover data. Once I wanted to 'test' how well the supposed "Geek" Squad knew computers - asked them "How much heavier is a hard drive filled with data than a new one?" - the reply I got was "A few pounds heavier." Geek Squad are just people who have the very basic knowledge of computers or those of whom were working at Best Buy at the time that Geek Squad 'merged' into Best Buy. There are some 'true' geeks working at Geek Squad...somewhere. But the fact that they charge $100 for a field trip (to your house) is more than enough for me to say it's not worth the 'risk' of not having the issue resolved considering how expensive Data Recovery may be on its own..

I haven't been around here long enough to get a feel as to who does computer repair/technical support and the likes. Though, I would like to know how damaged or "crapped out" the hard drive actually is. Does it have an OS installed on it? Or were you using it just as a data drive for your stuff? There are some programs out there that are semi-decent for recovering some data (not always able to recover every thing). But I would need to know to what extent the hard drive is damaged in order to suggest much else. I can't say yay or nay to any of the local people handling repair and recovery - but just be sure that the data you want to pull from the hard drive is worth $100-450 from your pockets before going about and getting it sorted out.

 

[awpitt]

My hard drive failed last night. The good news is that I'm pretty good about backing up, but there's still some data on there that I'd like to have back.

Do you guys know anyone who specializes in data recovery? Or any suggestions on how I can recover myself?

I had a hard drive crash before and was able to recover by booting to the Windows XP setup CD. It will let you use the Recovery console which is where you can run CHKDSK /R. This should (maybe) get you to the point where you can boot up normally long enough to get what ever data you need. This assumes the data is on the same HD where the operating system is.

 

[itsbob]

Anyone? I'd prefer to use someone locally but I'll send it away if I have to.

Explain what you mean by HD failure..

Does it still spin up? Did it just not let you boot from it? it maybe possible to slave it to another master drive, and get all of your data off of it still.. USUALLY the problem is a corrupt boot sector so you can't boot from your drive, but you can still get to the data, you just have to boot from another drive and read the data from there.

 

[vraiblonde]

Running Windows XP (recently updated and current)

Computer boots but Windows won't start. When I try to start normally, it gets stuck on the "loading Windows" screen. When I tried to start in Safe Mode, it thought about it for a few minutes, then said there was a hard drive failure.

Left it alone over night to settle down, which surprisingly works sometimes. This morning I started normally and it stayed on the loading Windows screen for quite some time, then went into CHKDSK.

Screen after screen of "File record segment xxxx is unreadable". It's still doing this after a couple of hours. I'm going to let it finish completely and see what happens.

Next step will be to try and boot from my XP CD and see if that will let me in to at least backup my data - then it can die for all I care.

This is my work computer with all my really important stuff. I do have a week-old backup but I need my more recent emails and a few other things. Would be worth $500 or so to recover because it would cost me more than that in my time to recreate.

 

[itsbob]

Is the drive making any unusual noises? Like a faint bicycle bell sound, or a very faint grinding noise?

Sounds like an easy recovery.. do you have another computer up and running?


BG had a similar issue, and I bought a new HD, installed it, and installed her old drive as a slave.. The programs don't run form the slave (like Office etc) BUT all the data files were accessible.

 

[MMDad]

Is the drive making any unusual noises? Like a faint bicycle bell sound, or a very faint grinding noise?

Sounds like an easy recovery.. do you have another computer up and running?


BG had a similar issue, and I bought a new HD, installed it, and installed her old drive as a slave.. The programs don't run form the slave (like Office etc) BUT all the data files were accessible.

I had the same thing happen to me. Get a new HD, install XP on the new HD, then grab whatever you need off of the old drive. You can still use the old drive until it finishes crashing, but do not store anything you want to save on it. It will eventually finish crashing.

 

[vraiblonde]

Is the drive making any unusual noises? Like a faint bicycle bell sound, or a very faint grinding noise?

Sounds like an easy recovery.. do you have another computer up and running?

Faint grinding noise and I have a laptop up and running.

What should I do next?

 

[vraiblonde]

I have never installed a HD. Is it difficult to do?

 

[BadGirl]

I have never installed a HD. Is it difficult to do?

Vrai, how about if Bob stops by this afternoon to fix your computer for you?

He fixed mine - easy peasy!

 

[Mousebaby]

This guy fixed my Dell XPS recently, he may be able to come out and fix your computer. He works for QualXserv, the number is 1-800-253-7100. His name is Richard, thats all I can read on the card. His last name looks like it could be Wathen. Anyway, its worth a shot, he's very fast and efficient at fixing the problems. Hope this helps!

 

[itsbob]

I have never installed a HD. Is it difficult to do?

Easy peasy..

Go to Best Buy and buy a new HD, don't try to do anything with the old one yet..

Take the old one out and swap one for one with the new one.. take the cables off of the back of the old drive and attach to the new drive. Install whatever Windows you are using now.

AFTER you install the new drive, look at the back of the old drive (where you removed the two cables from) there will be a single jumper on two of six pins, and the top of the HD will be a graphic depicting where the jumper is and the other choices.

There should be Slave, Master and Cable Select.. The new drive should be set to Master, the old drive set to Slave.. OR if it's a newer computer they can both be set to Cable Select.. (check what your old drive is set at, and change accordingly, if the old drive was set to cable select than both should be now, if the Old drive was set to Master, then use the Master Slave set-up)

Now, the new drive is installed and you have Windows installed, the computer boots fine.. now you can re-install the old drive.

The ribbon drive (the REAL wide one) that is attached to the back of your new drive should have another 'plug' on the ribbon, you want to plug that into your old drive. It only goes on one way so be careful (red stripe on the ribbon goes towards the power outlet), find another available power outlet and plug it in to the back of the old drive.

Boot up your computer and you should be able to see two Hard drives on your desktop, usually C: (New) and D: (old).. you should be able to transfer all your data that you want to save from D: and move it to C:.

You will still have to re-install all of your programs onto your new drive.. All of your office suite..etc..

 

[itsbob]

http://lifehacker.com/software/feature/how-to-install-a-hard-drive-137179.php

Picture tutorial!!

 

[vraiblonde]

Cool! Thanks, Bob I'll go to BB today and pick up a new HD. If I run into a problem, I'll call you with an SOS

 

[itsbob]

Cool! Thanks, Bob I'll go to BB today and pick up a new HD. If I run into a problem, I'll call you with an SOS

This is the easy fix, if this doesn't work then you can start thinking about data recovery service..

If one of the heads or one of the platters are damaged then this won't work, but this is the first thing, and the easiest thing to try first and 90% of the time will work.

 

[Ender]

I'm going to agree with Bob on this one, now knowing what errors you're getting out of the hard drive. It looks as though it's just on the road to destruction; not quite there yet. Sounds like segment corruption, that's why Windows can't load. Make sure you have a bootable version of the Windows XP CD-ROM to install to your new hard drive as well as having its serial lingering around. If you need any assistance, I'll be willing to help - and I'm sure Bob would be too =)

 

[itsbob]

Cool! Thanks, Bob I'll go to BB today and pick up a new HD. If I run into a problem, I'll call you with an SOS

VERY IMPORTANT. Make sure the computer is off anytime you are switching cables or hooking up power etc.. as a matter of fact, to be on the safe side.. unplug the power cord from the back of the computer. You could inadvertenly short your drive and lose everything if there is power on..

 

[vraiblonde]

Thanks guys! This ticks me off because the computer is only a year and a half old.

 

[itsbob]

Thanks guys! This ticks me off because the computer is only a year and a half old.

When i worked IT at PennDot we bought EVERYONE IBM PC's.. GL300's I believe.. starting at about 6 months the harddrives on one particular model started to fail.. We spent 80% of our time replacing hard drives for the following 6 months. And these were catastrophic failures.. You could hear the arms that move the heads across the platters hitting the inside of the HD enclosure.

 

[Mousebaby]

When i worked IT at PennDot we bought EVERYONE IBM PC's.. GL300's I believe.. starting at about 6 months the harddrives on one particular model started to fail.. We spent 80% of our time replacing hard drives for the following 6 months. And these were catastrophic failures.. You could hear the arms that move the heads across the platters hitting the inside of the HD enclosure.

Same thing happened to this computer. It was not even 6 mos. old. I could hear this squeaking noise and it got louder and louder. They finally replaced the harddrive then the something else started screwing up on this thing. After they replace the motherboard and both memory bars they finally said ok lets try the graphics card. So far so good. But I'm not going to hold my breath. I will never buy another Dell as long as I live. I used to like them, they were good to me for a long time. But its friggen rediculous to pay what I paid for this laptop and have nothing but trouble out of it. Damn glad I bought the warranty for 4 yrs. on the thing, I think I may need it!