URGENT trying to retireve data from crashed harddrive

fintan109

PLEASE HELP!

On the screen of my Dell laptop three wekks ago, PBR appeared. i had never seen this before so I followed what the screen said to press certian keys to reboot the computer, i did that and the same thing appeared. I brought the laptop to a computer store and they told me that the harddrive crashed and I had lost all my data so needles to say I nearly started crying! The staff member in the shop worked on the laptop for the next few days for me and told that they could access the information but the shop was broken into a few days later and the shop laptop they had my harddrive connected to was stolen. Now the staff member has given me the piece of equipment they used to retrieve the data, along wiht the steps required to do so. I have only been able to get a loan of another laptop now to work on.

Do you think I am wise to do this myself or should I give it to an IT company who can do it for me? (I'm terrified of doing this incase the same thing like above happens and the harddrive gets stolen). If I do this on my friend's borrowed laptop destroy his laptop or affect their laptop in any way?? And also given my crashed harddrive hasnt been worked in in 3weeks could all the data be gone?

Please help, I'm not a tech person so your advice and help would be really appreciated.

Odaise Gaelach

So what did equipment did they give to you and tell you to do with it?

fintan109

i dont' know the name of the piece fo equipment. It fits intot he prongs of the hard drive and it has a portal to fit into a computer so you can retrieve the data. I was told having connected the equipment material attached my harddrive into whatever computer/laptop I'm working on follow the steps I was given (click documents and settings, account folder name, properties, security, advanced, owner tab, edit, administrators, replace over) and by doing this, I'm giving the laptop I#m working on persmission to read my crashed harddrive.

Is it too risky for me to do?

ressem

What you received was a USB to SATA connector.

We can't know how extreme the damage is from here.
However if the data is of critical value to you, really you should get a repair company to copy it to a good drive, as if the hard drive is badly damaged, windows will attempt to check and repair it when it is connected, which could do more harm than good.

You won't damage your friend's laptop by connecting the drive. If the drive is badly damaged, Windows may slow to a crawl while the drive is connected and Windows will automatically attempt and re-attempt to read bad sectors.

Leaving the drive unpowered for 3 weeks won't do damage, so provided it's not mishandled or left in moist conditions there shouldn't be any further degradation.
If the drive's hardware is in a bad state then the damage will get worse while the drive is powered up. So concentrate on copying the files and folders that you regard as most important first.

Cork24

if you have a Linux Computer you could try and plug it into that, you could freeze the HD, if the data is already backup and no need for it format the HD could be a Error in the REG file in the HD.

Snowbat

PBR is a partition boot record - the first block of a bootable partition. It contains code used to boot the operating system.

From your description, it seems the PBR has either become corrupt or is unreadable. A computer is no longer able to boot from that partition but the filesystem in the partition appears to be unaffected (the shop could mount it and access your files).

If you know which files you need and where they are located, I suggest you do as the staff member advised. If you're not sure what you might need, I suggest you take an image of the partition or the entire disk using dd or Clonezilla or similar.

unkel

fintan109 wrote: »

I brought the laptop to a computer store and they told me that the harddrive crashed and I had lost all my data so needles to say I nearly started crying! The staff member in the shop worked on the laptop for the next few days for me and told that they could access the information

What a strange response from the shop. They told you straight away all your data was lost? Without trying to rebuild the PBR or MBR (master boot record) - which is often possible, returning your laptop fully working with all data intact. And then after a few days saying the data is retrievable but to tell you to do it yourself (while you are clearly uncomfortable with doing this)?

fintan109

Thanks for you replies.

Yes the piece of equipment I got from the shop looks like the SATA connector that you mentioned.

I followed the instructions given (which I listed above) and was able to access one of the main users on my crashed harddrive, saved these files onto the desktop of the laptop I'm now working on. In the middle of reading the files on my crahsed harddrive, a Widnows security box appeared saying that for me to read these files I had to close and reopen the properties of this particular user. So idid that and the same thing happened again. At he time the staff member was able to look at the laptop for me and resolve the problem. But when I was trying to work on other users accounts yesterday evening the same box appeared so I couldnt; do anything with it overnight. Now the staff member that was dealing with my complaint is not working for the next few days and I don't know should I deal with someone else in the firm. I was told to leave the USB to the SATA connector in the laptop I'm working on until I have retreived all the data from my crashed harddrive.

If I leave this in the latpop, will this damage the laptop in any way? While that equipment is in the laptop should I extract the retreived information from the destktop of this laptop onto an external harddrive or will inserting an external harddrive into the laptop affect either the laptop or external harddrive????

I havn't turned off the laptop I'm working on since I inserted the USB equipment I was given - is this ok to do?

I'm no good at tech so all your advice would really be appreciated. Thanks

riclad

if you leave the laptop,on if it has a battery the battery will be constantly charging,,battery will no longer work properly.
ie battery life will be reduced greatly.
EMail the other employee or ask him to write down on paper,or printout, what to do, when the account,needs to be acessed,
Remove the battery,or just switch off,shut down the laptop.
when laptop is off ,you can remove the usb cable ,from the laptop usb port.
When you are ready to work turn on laptop, after 4mins,when laptop is fully booted up , windows loaded ,plug in usb cable,
click,explore ,open new device, if window appears, new drive found/ready.
it may ask for the user, admin password ,to acess files on the drive/caddy,

Put in password,click ok.if drive is from your pc,it should be using your password,if you are reading your documents,
though ,each account user, may have a different password.
ie joes,account uses joe,s password.

YOU should be able to connect an external drive,copy all needed data to external drive,
it should have NO EFFECT on the caddy drive ,or laptop if you plug in external drive.
PUT in caddy usb cable to laptop,wait at least 7 minutes, or more,
when caddy drive is loaded ,recognised, open,
then, plug in external drive.

external drive will likely show as new drive, drive , E, F, OR G .
Drive D IS NORMALLY cdrom/dvd drive.

just dont try and plug in 2 drives to laptop,at the same time.
that will cause confusion,
as most pcs take 4 minutes or more to recognise an external drive,
my laptop,loads a driver,Then says new drive ready,
take 5 minutes to do this.