hard drive fecked??? anyway to retrieve data

jon1981

hi,

My laptop is moaning about a "primary hard disk failed to boot", before i ring coverplan is there anything i can do to retrieve the data? no doubt they wont try to fix it but just replace the hard drive

cheers

quaidox

have you tired booting to the recovery console and running fixboot and fixmbr ?

TJJP

jon1981 wrote:

hi,

My laptop is moaning about a "primary hard disk failed to boot", before i ring coverplan is there anything i can do to retrieve the data? no doubt they wont try to fix it but just replace the hard drive

cheers

If you have access to another pc (presume you do from boards post) and a cd burner, download an run a CD with BART PE installed on it. Do a web search for 'bart pe'. It will allow you to boot to a basic XP environment and may allow you to recover data to an external drive.

Good luck with it.

jon1981

quaidox wrote:

have you tired booting to the recovery console and running fixboot and fixmbr ?

is there a standard way of booting into that console, or is different per laptop manufacturer. i have a Packard Bell

jon1981

TJJP wrote:

If you have access to another pc (presume you do from boards post) and a cd burner, download an run a CD with BART PE installed on it. Do a web search for 'bart pe'. It will allow you to boot to a basic XP environment and may allow you to recover data to an external drive.

Good luck with it.

cheers for the advice ill give that a go, im actually booting from knoppix

Doodee

just select the boot device from the bios, or if your laptop has the feature choosing "Select boot device" on start-up.

Run the windows cd and you can access the recovery console from there.

You can also try HDRegen, or other tools found on Hirens boot cd.

GoneShootin

Try http://www.grc.com/spinrite.htm

vir7ual

if you're booting from Knoppix, check to see if knoppix is mounting your hard drive first. if knoppix can mount the drive and you can see it then you're in good shape. If you have an external drive connect it the laptop and then boot knoppix, this will mount your internal (messed up) drive and your external drive. copy your files from your internal to the external. You're internal drive should read as sd1 or hd1 if my memory serves me correct.

jon1981

cheers ill try that, as currently it aint mounting my internal drive.