Hard Drive crash.

[Abadd]

I currently have a faulty 80.00 gigabyte HD for my Dell Inspiron 8200
laptop. The manufacturer is Toshiba.

I was running my computer overnight when what looked like a BIOS error
read "Optical Disk not found. Hard Drive not found." I turned off the
computer. The next day, I booted it up and I heard some funny, but
faint noises from the HD. The computer didn't give me any errors but
if I ran the computer for more than about 45 minutes the computer
would just freeze up, without giving me an error message. I tried
repairing the windows xp software (from booting from the Windows XP
installation CD), but that didn't seem to have any effect. Next, I
used the chkdsk /r command in the command line program on Windows,
which took about three hours before I got this message:

STOP: c000021a
Unknown Hard Error

I also was hearing some loud whirring (if not grinding) noises and the
BIOS wasn't registering the hard drive.

I was wondering: Can my hard drive be repaired? I want the data recovered and am willing to pay up to 400 dollars to get the data extracted. Who should I take the HD to in order to get the data extracted?

 

[Nelviticus]

Repaired: probably not; recovered: probably. If you do a google search for 'data recovery' you should find several companies that offer this service. I don't know how much it will cost but I do know that it can be quite expensive.

It might be worth buying a cheap external 2.5" hard drive enclosure first and trying the hard drive in that, connected to a working PC, just in case it's a faulty hard drive controller on your laptop rather than a faulty hard drive.

Regards

Nelviticus

 

[kestrel1]

I dought it would be a faulty hard drive controller on the laptop. Hard drive controllers are part of the HDD. If you have heard suspect noises from your HDD then it is not a well drive. You should be able to get the data recovered, by doing the search as suggested above. You could try the external drive enclosure, but I don't think it will work.
I have worked on a few Dell laptops, all with Toshiba HDD's & I have had to replace two or three of these drives, because of physical faults. It may be worth checking your warranty. I did work on one Dell machine & the warranty was three years (special deal)
Check it just to make sure.

 

[wahnula]

GetDataBack

http://www.runtime.org/gdb.htm

is an amazing utility. Free options are Zero Assumption Recovery and Davory, but they are mostly useful for images and music files.

To use either you will need a working PC (with enough storage for your files) and an IDE-laptop adapter. Or go to a professional service like

http://www.datarecoveryspecialist.com/index.htm

Best of luck

 

[tekuser999]

You mentioned that the problem appear after running the computer for a period of time, this might indicate heat related problems and may not be the hard disk.

I'd buy an adaptor to connect the hard disk to a desktop and run diagnostics to determine if the drive is faulty and also check the temp of the laptop when the problem appears.

 

[firewolfrl]

I would copy the data to another drive as soon as possible. there will come a time when your drive is unrecoverable except in a lab...that's about over $2,000 or more and they may only be ably to recover only a small portion of the drive.
I have recovered laptop data using either BART PE or a WINDOWS XP LIVE CD and a 160 gig external USB harddrive
(they both recognize the External drive). also have a tech USB cable that I use that adapts to the laptop drive (also adapts to IDE or SATA). a laptop to IDE adapter is a very good suggestion too.

this is very important.
LAPTOPS GET HOT
do one of two things before data recovery (if you leave the drive in the laptop)

put the laptop on a couple of books with the left & Right side of the laptop resting on the edge of the books and a large open area under the laptop...then set up a fan and have it aimed to blow under the laptop. the may extent your time and make it able to transfer the data by keeping the whole computer cooler
ALTERNATE OPTION:
Buy a laptop cooler

heat and dropping the laptop are the biggest issue I see when it comes to laptops and harddrive failure.

something else....have a shop clean the computer and remove all the dust and fan clogs. and of course make sure all the fans work.