Computer help needed

[BadMuther]

My hard drive on my home computer dumped......it's fried, can't load windows or load anything.

I had about 90% of my documents saved. Besides going to an expert, does anyone have any idea how I could save any of my other data on there myself?

I can't start the thing up in safe mode, I can only enter setup.

[deleon275]

There are people who specialize in recovering lost hard drive data, but they're not very common. They deal with recovering lost corporate data etc... and they're not cheap by any means. Believe it or not, anything you delete on your hard drive can possibly be recovered too.

[FireFinder]

Ranger BadMuther:

Is the drive making noise like a blender full of rocks? If it is, its probably toast.

Does it make a repetitive clicking noise? Sometimes the arm that moves across the disk platters can stick, and lifting your tower/desktop about 3 to 5 inches off the desk or floor and dropping it can free that.

What brand hard drive is it? Most of the newer drives have some trouble-shooting software available that will test the drive, remap clusters, etc. that may allow you to get the system functional and recover data from it.

Data Recovery services are expensive. If you don't have a CD burner, it would be a worthy investment so you have a storage device to backup your data to. CD-R's are dirt cheap now.

If you can determine who manufactured your drive, and download the appropriate software (usually runs from a boot floppy), it should either tell you if the drive is toast, or be able to fix problems.

If you have a boot floppy with fdisk.exe on it, you can boot the system, and run this command (this command only!)

fdisk /mbr

That will recreate the master boot record on the drive, and that "might" fix your problem.

If you need some more help, let me know.

[Silverback]

Aww shit...Berkley whipping out some DOS action. I thought I was the only person left alive that knows DOS.

[FireFinder]

Aww shit...Berkley whipping out some DOS action. I thought I was the only person left alive that knows DOS.

Ranger Silverback, I'm a quasi-professional computer geek. :)

[Parabellum]

What happened BM? Spill some gravy on the key board?

[BadMuther]

I read the error messages to my father-in-law, who is a computer geek, and he told me the hard drive is shot.......The syysytem simply won't read the drive being there.

I appreciate all the help, I think I am going to contact a local recovery expert to see how much it would be to pull the data.

I can't lose my pics of hate in a tutu........

[Rock Island Ranger]

What happened BM? Spill some gravy on the key board?

Thats not only cruel but that wouldnt fry his hard drive. Im thinkin he was storing Moon pies in the disk drive.

[Spartan]

I read the error messages to my father-in-law, who is a computer geek, and he told me the hard drive is shot.......The syysytem simply won't read the drive being there.

I appreciate all the help, I think I am going to contact a local recovery expert to see how much it would be to pull the data.

I can't lose my pics of hate in a tutu........

Dude - I will send you my entire porn collection for free if that is what you are worried about losing. It's going to be cost-prohibitive unless you have Los Alamos Lab type data on there that you don't want to lose.

[Bugsy]

BM I sent you a private message to call me, I haven't been online much because I've been looking for work and working part-time. Sobersides was correct in terms of doing a Master/Slave setup on the new harddrive to determine if your drive can be "read" by your operating system. If so you can simply migrate the data to the new HD. However you must make changes to the jumper settings on both harddrives (set the new one to "master", the old HD to "slave"), then ensure that in your system bios you also have the primary and secondary items selected to "auto" meaning your bios will automatically discover each device that is hooked up to your workstation.

If your old HD cannot or is not recognized, (you can tell immediately during the "POST" phase...........you'll see something like IDE-0, IDE-1 and the model of the harddrive but that actually depends on the motherboard and system that you have).

If you're still not able to "view" the harddrive there is still one last chance hope of recovering the data (at no cost to you other than postage), I have a utilitiy called Winternals which allows for the recovery of lost data due to OS failure and in "some" cases Hardware failure. http://www.winternals.com/index.asp. If you contact me and are willing to send me the HD I'll see whether or not I can recover your data, and if so download it onto CD and then return all items back to you. Check out the PM.

FYI most Data Recovery firms charge around $900-1,200 to recover data on a normal home PC harddrive. For most people that cost just isn't worth it, however for others it is. I always suggest for home users to (on a monthly basis, back up any important data onto CD) there also are websites that specialize in backing up data to a online storage location but I personally don't like the idea of my financial info online becasue it could be compromised. Anyway's I hope that helps. Let me know if I can be of help.

BB

[stripe100]

BM,
Just installed my father-in-law's old ass HD in his new Dell yesterday and I did it using these websites. Enabled me to save all his old emails etc. If you want to try here you go:

http://www.pctechguide.com/tutorials/Ha ... Config.htm
http://compreviews.about.com/library/we ... daryhd.htm

I prefered the 1st link, plus it has links to manufacturer's websites with proper jumper settings etc. I knew nothing about this stuff until yesterday, and these sites made it pretty easy. Isn't the web a wonderful place. :D

Stripe

[BadMuther]

Thanks fellas, BD, PM inbound....

Have no fear boys, while only 90% of my documents were backed up, 100% of my porn was, so I am good there!!!

I had a couple hundred military pics and about 1000 songs that I lost though....