Re: [OT] Hard Drive Failure - data recovery

["Paul Gordon" <paul_gordon@xxxxxxx>]

Neil,

before you do anything drastic, it sounds like it should be worth trying to
access the drive from another boot... - the fact that it starts to boot up
suggests that it is spinning up OK... does it make any odd noises, or is
the
failure to boot the only symptom?

Have you tried booting from a DOS floppy with the NTFSDOS driver loaded
(read-only version available free from sysinternals.com), and see if you
can
CD to the drive and access the files that way?

If you can, then make up a bootdisk with LAN drivers on as well, and you
should be able to map to a share on some other machine on your LAN, and
copy
the data off to it...

Worth a try before you start cooking/freezing the drive etc....

Paul G.



>From: neilball@xxxxxxx
>Reply-To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
>To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
>Subject: [ukha_d] [OT] Hard Drive Failure - data recovery
>Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2003 09:16:34 +0100 (BST)
>
>Well, it had to happen - I've experienced my first hard disk failure (I
>think) in all of my many years using PC's &laptops..... and yes,
before
>anyone asks/laughs too loud (!!) I did not have a proper back up or
>disaster recovery plan implemented. As a result I'm now left with the
>difficulty and expense of deciding if it is worth trying to recover the
>important data from the failed drive assuming that it is possible.
>
>The failure is on my laptop, the disk is NTFS and boots to the windows
XP
>splash screen before BSOD'ing and rebooting again (and again and
again...).
>None of the boot options makes any difference, and the recovery CD
fails
>when trying to find XP on the machine before reinstalling. I don't
think
>this is virus related as I'm pretty anal about that sort of thing,
which
>leaves me concluding the problem is the hard disk itself.
>
>Because of the importance of the data I don't want to try anything that
>could cause more damage - I've seen suggestions that placing the hard
drive
>in a freezer may help - but I would rather try a professional solution
>first. So can anyone suggest contacts worth trying to see if anything
can
>be recovered. I need to balance up the costs against likely results
before
>proceeding. Any help/recommendations would be gratefully received.
>
>Neil B.
>
>
>** UKHA2004 BE THERE! ** - start planning now.
>
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