Can they be saved?

[new girl on the bloc]

My hard drive went into cardiac arrest sometime during the night. It is a rather newly installed hard drive that I've had for about one month. So...I sorta did not have any of my photos backed up since I did the upgrade- ouch!! I do not know if there is any way to retrieve the photos or not?

I had some incredible rose photos that I loathe to think about never seeing again. We have an incredible rose garden here with some of the most amazing roses I've seen. So I am on my way there now to do some snappin possibly to console myself...

the hard lessons that we must learn...

[KarlJones]

Is this an additional drive, or is there an operating system on it? What system are you using? Does the drive still show up? What error message(s) is returned?

[new girl on the bloc]

karljones wrote:
Is this an additional drive, or is there an operating system on it? What system are you using? Does the drive still show up? What error message(s) is returned?


it is a new drive (laptop) with 30 gigs more space. So, it replaced my old drive (which i am now using again) and had the os windows on it.

when i turned my pc on the dell screen came up, sat there thinking for a few minutes, then a black screen appeared that said no optical disc drive or bootable drive could be found with a suggestion to try F1 to find it, but it produced nothing.

Thanks for the questions and concern!

[mullo]

Are you able to test the drive else where? What OS was on it ? If possible try connecting the drive up as a slave drive and have the OS on another primary drive, with any luck it may see the the drive and only be a booting issue.

[new girl on the bloc]

mullo wrote:
Are you able to test the drive else where? What OS was on it ? If possible try connecting the drive up as a slave drive and have the OS on another primary drive, with any luck it may see the the drive and only be a booting issue.

the os was windows xp on a laptop. the hard drive had zero power but when it was switched out and the original put back in the pc it booted with no problems? bad circuitry in the hd? thanks mullo!

[roncor]

new girl,

May I ask how you determined that "the hard drive had zero power?" Windows XP uses certain files on the hard drive for bootup information. Also, there is a certain part of the drive that is the bootup sector which certain files are located. The OS will not be able to bootup without any of these files. But, that does not mean that the other data on the drive cannot be read. I think, mullo was thinking the same thing. What he suggests is to connect the "bad" drive as the slave and the original "good" drive as the primary. This way, the machine will boot up to the old drive. Once the OS is up, you can then try to read the data from the "bad" drive.

[rtphokie]

Are you able to boot to a CD or floppy? If so, you might be able access the drive that way.

It might just be a corrupt OS. Assuming these photos weren't in any system folders, you could reinstall the OS and it will leave all the other files alone.

As a last resort (and depending on what value you put on the files that are on that drive) you could hire a service like Drive Savers to recover the disk for you. They've got an excellent record but aren't cheep (several hundred bucks just to look at it).

[new girl on the bloc]

roncor wrote:
new girl,

May I ask how you determined that "the hard drive had zero power?" Windows XP uses certain files on the hard drive for bootup information. Also, there is a certain part of the drive that is the bootup sector which certain files are located. The OS will not be able to bootup without any of these files. But, that does not mean that the other data on the drive cannot be read. I think, mullo was thinking the same thing. What he suggests is to connect the "bad" drive as the slave and the original "good" drive as the primary. This way, the machine will boot up to the old drive. Once the OS is up, you can then try to read the data from the "bad" drive.

roncor,

when i turned my pc on it could not detect any existence of a hard drive, thus my statement about it having zero power. perhaps a technically incorrect statement.

i will, as suggested, use the problematic hard drive as the slave drive and see if i can boot off the primary.

thanks so much!

[new girl on the bloc]

rtphokie wrote:
Are you able to boot to a CD or floppy? If so, you might be able access the drive that way.

It might just be a corrupt OS. Assuming these photos weren't in any system folders, you could reinstall the OS and it will leave all the other files alone.

As a last resort (and depending on what value you put on the files that are on that drive) you could hire a service like Drive Savers to recover the disk for you. They've got an excellent record but aren't cheep (several hundred bucks just to look at it).

rtphokie,

i was not able to do anything except get into the bios. not sure if i can do anything from there?

thanks for your suggestions. i will try the slave drive idea and if that does not work i'll go from there.

i considered the recovery avenue, but not at a couple hundred $$.

thanks again!

[piper]

When a hard drive won't boot it usually is a software/OS/bootsector problem, not a hardware failure. In most cases all the data and non-OS files are intact.

If you actually have a Windows XP disk reinstalling XP would probably do the trick. HOWEVER, most new machines DO NOT include actual OS disks. Instead they have recovery CDs that completely revert your drive to its pristine state with only OS files. If you run a recovery CD the drive may be OK afteward, but all data files WILL be gone.

As already mentioned the best approach is to boot from a floppy or CD with the non-bootable HD in the machine and see if the pictures are still there.

It would be even better if your laptop has a removable CD player/writer that allows you to put a second HD in a special carrier and slide into the CD slot. That way you can boot up from the good old drive and have the new one "alive" in the system to look at.

If you have no idea whether you can put a second drive into your machine or how to create a boot floppy or CD, your best bet is to find the geekiest person available and get them to help.

Good luck

Good luck

[piper]

You mentioned being able to get into the BIOS so do this:

1) Boot with the bad drive and go into BIOS setup.

2) Most likely on the first BIOS page or two you should find a setting to display all BIOS boot messages. It might be called verbose or something similar and is usually defaulted to off so you don't see all the initial boot information.

3) Save the BIOS settings with verbose enabled and reboot.

What you will be looking for is a message along the lines of:
Pri-Master (Hitachi or IBM model #) S.M.A.R.T Capable and Status OK

All laptop drives made in the last 5 years or so have the S.M.A.R.T (don't recall what the acronym means) system which automatically detects bad sectors and moves them to a reserved area of the drive. If the drive actually has physical problems and the reserved area starts filling up the boot-time S.M.A.R.T. message will warn you a drive failure is imminent - replace the drive as soon as possible. If the reserve space is full the boot-time S.M.A.R.T. message will say something along the line of "Status - FAIL"

If the message is anything other than Status OK you have a physically bad drive.

It would still be worth trying to do a floppy or CD boot to actually look at the files, but the S.M.A.R.T message will be a good indicator of whether you would be able to retrieve any files.

[new girl on the bloc]

piper - thanks for the info on HOW to do it. sometimes i long for a little "geekiness" when it comes to my pc. i will follow these instructions when i am at my pc and let you know how it goes. two ;) ;) for you!

[MikeG3]

Another suggestion, is attach the "dead" drive to another computer with a new cable. As suggested maybe bad sectors or just a screwed up system.

Hope this helps.

Mike G.

[availlant]

Dear New Girl on the bloc,

I hate to be the bearer of bad news but: if your HD was not even recognized by the computer during boot up, chances are that it has a hardware failure. Even when infected by a virus or scrambled by a magnetic source, a functioning HD will be able to be recognized by the bios because its device information is held in non-volatile rom (you just get the ominous "boot sector not found" message. Cables are rarely the problem but swaping them for a new set is a good sugestion but since you are on a lapton this is not an option for you (neither is a slave drive) unless you have a PC handy.

If your computer IS recognizing the HD as the BIOS level, you can spend $$$$ to get the data manually lifted from the platter sector by sector. In any case, if you try to reformat the HD and it will not let you, its time for a new hard drive.

It sounds like this was a self install, if so, rememberthe golden rule. Always work in a grounded enviromnent (ie use rubber gloves) when handeling electronic computer equipment. If this was not a self install, get a new HD or your money back

Sorry and good luck with the new photos, I am sure they will be better than the ones you lost.......

[CowboyPoetWannabe]

Hello new girl. I'm sorry to hear of your troubles. There's an old addage that says:
"Never trust your data to someone who has never lost data." Welcome to the trusted! I hope you can recover (both data and peace of mind).
I know it's of little consolation but most of us have lost data, and have learned much from the experience. Right now I'm looking for a GOOD backup program for my work at home, and am coming up short on what I consider an economically feasible package. I'm currently using Veritas BackupExec Desktop Pro, but it's no longer supported, and doesn't support my new CD writer. The replacement, Backup My PC, seems to crash after only about 6 disks are written. So if anyone has a suggestion along these lines, I would be grateful.

-CPW

[new girl on the bloc]

i am filled with awe at all of the responses of help and empathy that i have received. you're all great!

i had the geekiest person that i know look at it and he thinks that the hard drive failed. we are going to try the slave drive idea though and see if that may work.

availlant and CPW, thanks for your kind words. i had that little voice of intuition telling me to back up the files a few days ago...

i too am looking for a good back up system CPW.

[new girl on the bloc]

Great News - the photos have been recovered!

I used the defunct hard drive as a slave drive and when it was plugged into the primary drive it booted up and without a fight, coughed up the files. What a relief!

I coudn't have done it without the assistance of all of you who offered a lending hand. Many thanks to my g3 comrades.