Computer failing to boot up -- Hard Drive problem?

My parents' computer has decided to not boot up, and I was kind of at a loss for the cause. From what I could tell (and via phone, my uncle as well, who is a computer God) it seemed like it was from a corrupted Windows file. However, when I finally got CHKDSK to run, it instantly started listing off lots of corrupted sectors on the harddrive.

I'm not exactly a computer wizard. I do pretty well for myself and fixing 'everyday' computer fuckery with my own computers and my friends' computers, but this has me rather stumped. I pulled out the harddrive in question and slapped it in an enclosure to see if I could get anything off of it through my laptop, but alas -- nothing. It appears that my laptop tries to mount the drive (ie: it makes the sound when a USB device is connected), but then makes the disconnect sound without ever registering that a disk was ever there. The drive goes on, it spins... but that's about all it does.

I don't know if that's enough information to go on, but I appreciate any advice you can give. I would like to know if the hard drive is completely toast -- and if it is, I still need to either take it to my uncle or a data recovery place, because there's an awful lot of stuff on it that I would kind of like to have.



Jam it back in, in the dark.

Short answer to your topic: Yes.

Long answer: Usually you can recover something. Try something called Spinrite 6.0 first. It's highly recommended, and very small. It's not free of course, but you will find it ridiculously easy to get a 'free' copy on the internet.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

What about the whole "put the hard drive in the freezer" thing? Does that hold any water?
In the meantime, I'll go look at that SpinRite. I really don't want to lose more of the stuff on the drive than I have to, and I'd rather not have to pay for data recovery (especially since 95% of that stuff was free to begin with )...

thanks for the reply!

Most amazing jew boots

Well, since there are bad sectors it really doesn't matter what you can or can't do. The bottom line is the harddrive is imminent to failure. However, you may still be able to recover some data. Ghosting utilities (IE: Norton Ghost) are available to copy data sector-by-sector from one harddrive to another.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Arkhangelsk, the "put your hardk disk in a freezer" gamble DOES work. I tried it successfully, freezing it for 2 hours, putting it in a throwaway external enclosure, and plugging it in to copy everything off of it.

I was unable to access it via SpinRite, or Norton Ghost, for that matter. Since there was nothing to lose, well... If you can still access it, run it through SpinRite and Ghost first.

After it thaws, you'll probably have water damage to deal with, so freezing is absolutely the last resort. You won't get a second crack at it.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Yep, sounds like it's done. Basically, I think the hard drive has to go through a series of checks but if it's screwed up, it can't go through all of them and will shut down (hence the disconnect sound).

other options might be to try reading it on it's side. Everyone else mentioned programs...and even procedures to get your data off it.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Well, I got my parents a new HD and slaved the failing drive...as of right now, I used GetDataBack to access the folder that had all of my stuff on it. Lucky for me, the only folders with massive corruption (that I cared about) were affiliated with DC++ downloads. I had to get around some previous password/ownership issues to get to my stuff, though -- hence, using GetDataBack.

I've almost copied everything of importance to a backup drive.

Thanks so much for the comments and suggestions!


FELIPE NO