hard drive died any recovery possible?

[THE/ACKSTER]

hi all, on friday the 13th I switched off my pc as normal and watched it shut down. later at 2.40 in the morning i switched it on before going to work to check my mail. as it was booting up i went to make a cup of tea, on returning i saw the screen, saying "DISK BOOT FAILURE INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER". I know there was nothing wrong with the disc,noise etc so there was no warning and os was vista. i have checked connections and tried the drive in other pc's but it seems to be dead. the drive does not show on the bios also so it will be a mechanical problem so i am sure it is down to some data recovery agency as i had not backed it up for ages. can anyone help in the recovery or know of any way it can be saved/recoverd on the cheap?
many thanks
Ack

[Mr Men]

Order a new Hard Drive

[THE/ACKSTER]

i have, infact i have orderd 2 one to use and one to backup onto

[wakadoo]

ita always going to be a struggle when its not seen by the bios m8..

but set your pc up on the new drive and see if you can get the old one going as a slave or even try it in a caddy to make it easier to mess about with.

good luck to you THE/ACKSTER

[wakadoo]

Order a new Hard Drive

are you one of the "tech guys" at pc world......

[THE/ACKSTER]

thanks Wakadoo for your reply, i am sorry i don't think i would be asking these sort of questions if i was from pc world.

[wakadoo]

the pc world bit was for Mr Men m8, not you lol.

[Tim.Lad]

If your logic board has gone then recovering data with out professional help is going to be difficult, a specialist data recovery service will have to find the same drive with the same firmware and very close manufacturing date, some drives do not register in the bios if the drive does not spin up correctly or some other problems..

One thing you could try is the freezer trick, it sounds crazy but has worked for me twice, put the drive in a air tight plastic bad like a zip lock bag and put it in the freezer for 30mins take it out and put it in you computer straight away, if it boots copy of any data and get rid of that drive.

[J0hn]

"DISK BOOT FAILURE INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER".

It says disk BOOT failure, not disk failure.

Looks like a boot failure that can be rectified, I've had it a while ago but darned if I can remember what I did. Probably just reinstalled Windows.

You could try resetting the BIOS (usually a jumper on the mobo). I reckon you'll be able to acess the drive OK if you hook it up in another PC. Set it as slave if it's Pata, no need if it's Sata.

[Tim.Lad]

It says disk BOOT failure, not disk failure.

Looks like a boot failure that can be rectified, I've had it a while ago but darned if I can remember what I did. Probably just reinstalled Windows.

You could try resetting the BIOS (usually a jumper on the mobo). I reckon you'll be able to acess the drive OK if you hook it up in another PC. Set it as slave if it's Pata, no need if it's Sata.

you get this message if their is nothing to boot from, used to be a common problem when people left floppies with no boot sector, this is more serious because the bios is not seeing the drive

[Over Carl]

Porblem is in the old days you could just change the board to get a drive working but modern drives need the heads calibrated or something meaning one board will be unlikely to be correctly calibrated in another drive.

[Wompastompa]

Although those messages sound pretty scary, there's a good chance your hard drive is still intact. In most cases this problem can be fixed with a simple procedure that repairs your Master Boot Record (MBR). When you start your computer, the BIOS (basic input/output system) looks for the MBR on the first sector of your [COLOR=#006400 !important][COLOR=#006400 !important]hard [COLOR=#006400 !important]drive[/COLOR][/COLOR][/COLOR]

. The MBR tells the BIOS which partition on the hard drive contains the operating system.

So... if the MBR is damaged, the BIOS can't locate and start the operating system. When your BIOS detects a damaged MBR or boot sector, you'll see ominous messages like Invalid partition table, Error loading operating system, or Missing operating system. In some cases, dark clouds will apppear on the horizon, and you may hear the distant rumble of thunder. But fortunately, the Recovery Console offers some tools to help clear up the problem.
Repairing a Damaged MBR

Your Windows XP setup CDROM has a tool called the Recovery Console, which is designed to help you repair a damaged master boot record or boot sector. To start the Recovery Console and fix your damaged MBR, follow these steps:

1. Restart your computer with the [COLOR=#006400 !important][COLOR=#006400 !important]Windows [COLOR=#006400 !important]XP[/COLOR][/COLOR][/COLOR] Setup disk in the CDROM drive.
2. If you are prompted to press a key to start the computer from CDROM, do so quickly. Otherwise it may try to boot from the hard drive.
3. After a few minutes, you'll see a prompt to press the R key to start the Recovery Console.
4. When Recovery Console starts, it will prompt you to enter a number corresponding to the Windows XP installation that you need to repair. In most cases, you'll enter "1" (which will be the only choice). If you press ENTER without typing a number, Recovery Console will quit and restart your computer.
5. Enter your Administrator password. If you don't enter the correct password, you cannot continue.
6. At the Recovery Console [COLOR=#006400 !important][COLOR=#006400 !important]command [COLOR=#006400 !important]prompt[/COLOR][/COLOR][/COLOR], type fixmbr and then verify that you want to proceed.

Your damaged MBR will be replaced with a shiny new one, and you should then be able to boot your system normally. In some cases, you may need to repair the boot sector in addition to the MBR. If your system still doesn't boot properly, repeat the steps above, but issue the fixboot command instead.
NOTE: These procedures assume that you have only one operating system installed. If you are an advanced user and have a multi-boot system with more than one operating system, you may need to do some additional reading about the fixmbr and fixboot commands at the Microsoft website.

[THE/ACKSTER]

thanks for your reply Wompastompa, could you tell me is this possible with vista 64 ultimate or xp, my setup is with vista only and no partitions on the drive. will this setup work for vista or is there another way?

[prezzy]

There is a repair console or repair option on all windows discs

Select to boot from dvd / cd - boot to your install dvd and follow the prompts for repair . . .

[burner1]

hi all, on friday the 13th I switched off my pc as normal and watched it shut down. later at 2.40 in the morning i switched it on before going to work to check my mail. as it was booting up i went to make a cup of tea, on returning i saw the screen, saying "DISK BOOT FAILURE INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER". I know there was nothing wrong with the disc,noise etc so there was no warning and os was vista. i have checked connections and tried the drive in other pc's but it seems to be dead. the drive does not show on the bios also so it will be a mechanical problem so i am sure it is down to some data recovery agency as i had not backed it up for ages. can anyone help in the recovery or know of any way it can be saved/recoverd on the cheap?
many thanks
Ack

Bearing this part you've mentioned, I don't see how a software util can do anything? Not being sarcy, just interested really as I was of the belief all software calls to hardware was ultimately controlled through the bios.

[rIKmAN]

If the drive doesn't work as a slave in another PC, and isn't picked up by the BIOS, then I'm afraid your gonna be fooked mate.

Wompastompa's post can work, but only if the drive is picked up by the BIOS, and if it isn't how (or what) is it going to repair?

When you put it into another PC, what happens?
Does it get a drive letter?
Can you assign it a drive letter in Disk Management?
Does it ask you to format it when you try and access it?

If the data is THAT important, there are places that will strip it down and get the data back.
If it's not that important it's not worth the outlay, just buy a new drive and put it down to experience.

Always remember to back up important shit - even if it's only to DVDs it's better than nothing should the worst happen.

[ZX7R]

If you do need a recovery specialist in the end then I can recommend one. Keep us updated.
Oh and make sure you backup in the future. :-)

[THE/ACKSTER]

thanks for the replies, i tell my kids to always backup there laptops and bought them external harddrives. can you imagine what kind of s**t i am getting at the moment? ok ZX7R i think i will need someone to recover the info but i am taking it to my friends to do the freeze trick and any other tricks he knows so will keep you informed if anything changes and let me know of your recovering company.

[Mr Men]

are you one of the "tech guys" at pc world......

No,Why are you?

[theargyspy]

I Had a wierd HDD failure recently, guy brought in his latop BSOD on startup, tried safe mode..same thing tried recovery mode, recovery mode couldn't "see" the HDD


removed HDD placed in caddy and connected via USB to computer, nothing doing

I was, as always trying to recover the guys family (non backed up photos)

placed HDD back in laptop and booted via Linux live cd, bingo.. got some strange
linux message ( dont know much about linux!) and could "see" HDD and remove photos
to USB stick

Most of the above is what I would normally do to recover date off knackered HDD, have tried freezer method before but never worked for me!

Thought "in for a penny" I would try and intall the Linux OS from the live disc..got another strange linux message, tried again and Linux installed

ran that for day or so, ran some tests on HDD all seemed fine

next booted from XP Home formatted and did fresh install, all drivers went on fine and laptop has been running better than ever according to owner

always worth bunging in a Linux live cd & booting up if you cant "see" HDD you might get data recovered that way