Bloody Computers

[wehstar]

Right OK, hopefully somebody here will be able to help.

When I decided to see if my laptop bounced on the floor, it seemed it didn't like it. It was on at the time and I was pleased to see it still works. Then when I turned it off and back on again, windows failed to load; there was a suggestion that I need to run the standard recovery CD that the laptop came with. So there is hope, however I've run that recovery CD before and I'm sure it wipes my existing data.

So is there any way I can access the laptop and then pull my files off (I don't know onto a CD or USB or something) before trying the wipe and delete option?

I'd take it to my nearest PC repairman for an opinion, but what with the naughty pics of myself and other local people on there, I really shouldn't be doing that. Besides, he would no doubt charge me money.

 

[couple47362]

I'm assuming you have a second computer at home since you posted this.

You could purchase a IDE-to-USB convertor and a Laptop hard drive convertor that would allow you to hook the laptop's hard drive to the USB of your other computer. This will allow you to copy your files off the drive and onto your other computer (assuming the drive is not too damaged). You will probably need to purchase a new drive due to physical damages done to the surface of the drive.

Typically the laptop hard drive is not too bad to get to (unless you have one of the IBMs with the drive under the keyboard). There usually will be a cover on the bottom of the laptop with a single screw. When you remove this cover, it should expose the hard drive. The hard drive typically has 2-4 screws holding it in. Some have a tray that slides into the side of the computer and is held in by a single screw. Some have the drive underneath the battery. If you have trouble finding the drive, post the make & model of laptop and either myself or somebody else from the board should be able to tell you exactly where the drive is and how to get to it.

Here is one from Amazon that has both the IDE-to-USB convertor and laptop hard drive convertor in one unit. It's $10US. If you have any friends that are computer geeks, they may already have this cable and may let you borrow theirs.

http://www.amazon.com/USB-Cable-Ada...1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1196260976&sr=8-1

I hope this helps.

 

[wehstar]

I'm assuming you have a second computer at home since you posted this.

You could purchase a IDE-to-USB convertor and a Laptop hard drive convertor that would allow you to hook the laptop's hard drive to the USB of your other computer. This will allow you to copy your files off the drive and onto your other computer (assuming the drive is not too damaged). You will probably need to purchase a new drive due to physical damages done to the surface of the drive.

Typically the laptop hard drive is not too bad to get to (unless you have one of the IBMs with the drive under the keyboard). There usually will be a cover on the bottom of the laptop with a single screw. When you remove this cover, it should expose the hard drive. The hard drive typically has 2-4 screws holding it in. Some have a tray that slides into the side of the computer and is held in by a single screw. Some have the drive underneath the battery. If you have trouble finding the drive, post the make & model of laptop and either myself or somebody else from the board should be able to tell you exactly where the drive is and how to get to it.

Here is one from Amazon that has both the IDE-to-USB convertor and laptop hard drive convertor in one unit. It's $10US. If you have any friends that are computer geeks, they may already have this cable and may let you borrow theirs.

http://www.amazon.com/USB-Cable-Ada...1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1196260976&sr=8-1

I hope this helps.

Excellent. I will try to give that a go then. Thanks a lot for the help.

 

[Weird Harold]

So is there any way I can access the laptop and then pull my files off (I don't know onto a CD or USB or something) before trying the wipe and delete option?

If you have a flppy or other removal media drive that you can boot from, you should be able to boot from a "windows recovery disk" -- you can make one on any windows computer with a compatible version of windows; see Windows Help for instructions.

The recovery disk should contain the DOS version scandisk so typing scandisk /surface at the A: prompt should test the drive surface and try to recover the data on the damage blocks before locking them so windows won't try to use them again.

Scandisk may not make the drive bootable, but it should at least tell you if you can recover anything from it.

 

[SubNebGuy]

you may also need to replace that harddrive. something like this happened to my mother in law's desktop. she knocked a heavy ashtray onto it while booting it up. this caused the harddrive to be physically damaged (basically the arm that reads data off the disk platter was bounced onto the platter, scraping it and making that section of the drive toast).

your absolute best bet is to slave this drive to another working machine, backup all the data, then try the recovery disk, which may fail.

 

[emap]

At this point the only thing to say is don't drop the feakin laptop you goof.

Yeah yeah I know it was an accident, maybe should put a short leash on the thingy so if it slips again it won't go very far.

 

[Weird Harold]

you may also need to replace that harddrive.

Probably will, but it depends on where the head(s) crashed into the platter and whether it damaged the head(s) as well as the platter(s)

Scandisk (or Norton's speed disk) takes forever to do a full surface scan but when it's done all of the damaged sections will be locked out (marked as Bad Sectors) and whatever information remains can be safely copied for transfer to the new drive (or in the case of the "naughty pictures" of friends and neighbors of the computer repair guy, burned to a CD and put in secure storage. )

A data recovery service will be necessary if Scandisk or other disk surface test can't recover something critical.