HELP! Recover laptop hard drive!

I didn't know any better place to come for some help with my problem than here... you guys always seem to amaze me with your wealth of knowledge on just about any topic out there... :wow:

So here's my predicament....

The office laptop (HP Pavilion dv6000) wouldn't boot on Friday morning. Couldn't even get it to boot in safe mode. I have no idea what happened to it... I wasn't the last one to use it on Thursday evening. It's rather a moot point anyway... it just don't work.

So I pulled the hard drive out and bought an enclosure for it and hooked it up to my home computer (HP TouchSmart). The enclosure is on... it is connected by USB... but my computer doesn't recognize it. I've tried "Search for new hardware"... nuthin. "Add new hardware"... nuthin. There is no software that needs to be installed. I've checked all of the connections... twice.

What am I doing wrong here? :help: please?? :candle:

Kel, can you hear the HDD spinning (humming) when you plug it into the USB port?

If it doesn't hum, then the HDD's motor is broken. That's bad news since the disc won't spin and you won't be able to access your data. If that's the case, you'll need to send the drive to people who do data rescue to disassemble the drive, install a new motor and rescue the data off the disk that way.

A little better news would be to know that the drive hums when you plug it in. That means the motor works fine, and that it's likely an error with the file structure preventing the disc to work. Depending on the level of damage, you may be able to use a file recovery utility yourself to rescue your files.


:thinking: I just thought of something else: Are you sure the USB ports of your computer can power the external enclosure? I have a drive that will only work on my laptop if I use one of those USB cables that has 2 connectors on one end (both are needed to get enough power to the drive), and another at the other end.

Yes, I hear humming. It goes for about 30 seconds then stops.

I do have access to a computer forensics dude... (may God protect him and keep him always... he saved my own desktop hard drive when the electric company decided to send some kind of whack voltage through my house in September and blew up my air conditioner, my computer, the electric meter on the side of the house and my hair dryer!)... but this is the work computer and not mine. The bosses will have to pay him to do the work this time... no pro bono for a friend. Thought I'd at least try here first to see if it's something I might be able to handle.

Good, that means it's a data corruption of some sort. People suggested a few really good tips in this thread of mine, back when my HDD went south. I hope some of them are useful.

The damage in to my drive was too extreme, and my half finished dissertation was in there, so I ended up biting the bullet and paying a pro service. It was pricey, but I got the vast majority of my files back.

I have heard of people putting hard drives in the freezer in order to recover data off of them but have never tried it myself.

See what your forensics dude says about it.

Take a look at spinrite 6, it may help you recover some of the information.

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

Another trick is to put the HD it in the fridge to cool it down, I read that sometimes they fail because a component overheats, this might help.

Good luck!
AlexGT

I *KNEW* there was a thread somewhere where someone else had a similar problem! I couldn't find it though...

I know the info I'm trying to recover is nowhere near as valuable as yours was. However, it is still valuable in that it is our scheduling on Outlook. I have no idea who is coming in for appointments tomorrow or when. The thing that pisses me off the most is that I honestly don't have these kind of problems with my own computers and because this is the office computer with such sensitive and critical information on it, there should never, ever be anything done on it that could possibly put it at risk. Yeah... tell that to the others in the office... :scowl:

Thanks Migs... I'll go read through that thread now... :kiss:

Black Rose said:

I have heard of people putting hard drives in the freezer in order to recover data off of them but have never tried it myself.

See what your forensics dude says about it.

Click to expand...

I've heard of this too but haven't tried it yet either. I guess it's worth a try... in or out of the static free bag, I wonder? :thinking:

Greta said:

Yes, I hear humming. It goes for about 30 seconds then stops.

I do have access to a computer forensics dude... (may God protect him and keep him always... he saved my own desktop hard drive when the electric company decided to send some kind of whack voltage through my house in September and blew up my air conditioner, my computer, the electric meter on the side of the house and my hair dryer!)... but this is the work computer and not mine. The bosses will have to pay him to do the work this time... no pro bono for a friend. Thought I'd at least try here first to see if it's something I might be able to handle.

Click to expand...

I hope you installed a breaker box surge protector after that.

But yes, humming is a good sign.

LukeA said:

I hope you installed a breaker box surge protector after that.

Click to expand...

Yes I did. Even though the electric company told me that there's no such thing as power surges anymore due to all kinds of fancy-schmancy fail-safe whateveryouhaveit equipment they have in place and it couldn't possibly have been their fault... :ironic:

Ok... putting the hard drive in the freezer... what about moisture getting into the unit?

Greta said:

:kiss:

Click to expand...

Right back at'ya.

Have you tried booting the laptop with a live-cd such as Knoppix? It doesn't use the HDD to run, but may give you access to the HDD's data to transfer to a external HDD or thumb drive. I have saved many corrupted computers this way.

I use one of these to connect the laptop drive to a desktop computer and can usually extract the data unless it is just to far gone. Sometimes windows will run checkdisk and fix corrupt data on the faulty drive. Good luck with getting the data you need.

Nitroz... I saw reference to that in another place and think it might be the answer. However, I can't do it with my own machine at home. I'm sure I could... but I don't want to get into it. My machine is the HP TouchSmart and I don't EVEN want to KNOW how to open this thing up and get to it's innards!!! My boss just called... she's setting up a new desktop at the office now. The converter might work on that.

Greta said:

Nitroz... I saw reference to that in another place and think it might be the answer. However, I can't do it with my own machine at home. I'm sure I could... but I don't want to get into it. My machine is the HP TouchSmart and I don't EVEN want to KNOW how to open this thing up and get to it's innards!!! My boss just called... she's setting up a new desktop at the office now. The converter might work on that.

Click to expand...

Excellent! Hopefully the machine is not all SATA connections for the drives with no IDE since it is a new machine. Alot of the old tech is starting to disappear from new machines...Parallel port, floppy drives, and IDE connections to name a few. This is all good news however, Bring on the cheap solid state hard drives...WooHooo!

Nitroz... the whole converter thing got me to thinking... (dangerous, I know). I have a 3.5" enclosure here. The connector is the same as the 2.5" hard drive. IOW... the 2.5" hard drive would fit into the 3.5" enclosure just as snug as a bug. So um... what kind of damage could I do to the 2.5" hard drive if I put it in the 3.5" enclosure and plugged that by USB into my computer? Or did hell just freeze over and I came up with a brilliant idea? :duck:

Greta said:

Nitroz... the whole converter thing got me to thinking... (dangerous, I know). I have a 3.5" enclosure here. The connector is the same as the 2.5" hard drive. IOW... the 2.5" hard drive would fit into the 3.5" enclosure just as snug as a bug. So um... what kind of damage could I do to the 2.5" hard drive if I put it in the 3.5" enclosure and plugged that by USB into my computer? Or did hell just freeze over and I came up with a brilliant idea? :duck:

Click to expand...

Any pictures of this enclosure?

The converter I linked to above would be an easier solution since the IDE will detect the drive without any driver issues you might have with a USB enclosure. IMO

I know the converter would be easier but the chances of our Staples (my only option here in the middle of the freakin' desert) having such a thing are slim to none. They don't even carry 2.5" enclosures. I had to go to Phoenix yesterday to get one.

I'll get pictures of everything in a little bit... the 3.5" enclosure and the hard drive itself. I have another demand that I must attend to at this time. While I was in Phoenix getting a hard drive enclosure, I also picked up this...


Meet Hank....

Wow, he's a cute one. You keep the drive and I'll take hank.