My Laptop died...along with LOADS of flashlight pictures
- Thread starter Crenshaw
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NA8
Flashlight Enthusiast
- Joined
- Jun 4, 2007
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The hard drive go or something more ?
adamlau
Flashlight Enthusiast
My best friend was uber peeved when his HDD went down with gigs of pr0n.
suspect its the hard drive, the blue screen of death is haunting my screen.Looks like ill have to reformat it proper...sigh!
At least my friend has the image file with all the major programs i need, photoshop, Vritual DJ, and stuff...
Crenshaw
At least my friend has the image file with all the major programs i need, photoshop, Vritual DJ, and stuff...
Crenshaw
M.S
Enlightened
Don't format it yet...
Find someone with linux knowledge and use ddrescue program to clone the harddrive, it does not stop on bad sectors. You can then just read the cloned drive with whatever program and find most of your files. I have done this many times to drives with bad sectors.
Find someone with linux knowledge and use ddrescue program to clone the harddrive, it does not stop on bad sectors. You can then just read the cloned drive with whatever program and find most of your files. I have done this many times to drives with bad sectors.
Fallingwater
Flashlight Enthusiast
There may be no need for even that.
What error message does the blue screen give?
Just yesterday I rescued a laptop that wouldn't boot with some error about the boot device by simply connecting its disk to my computer with a USB adapter and running chkdsk /R. It recovered a bunch of files, fixed a bunch of stuff and restored the computer to full bootability. Found no bad sectors either.
Oh, and always remember the golden rule: data you haven't backed up is data you don't want to keep.
What error message does the blue screen give?
Just yesterday I rescued a laptop that wouldn't boot with some error about the boot device by simply connecting its disk to my computer with a USB adapter and running chkdsk /R. It recovered a bunch of files, fixed a bunch of stuff and restored the computer to full bootability. Found no bad sectors either.
Oh, and always remember the golden rule: data you haven't backed up is data you don't want to keep.
too late, ive already tried recovering it back to a clean OS using norton ghost.... i thought that would work, but nope..
i couldnt see the blue screen , cos its set to auto retstart if startup fails. And i couldnt find the option to turn it off.
i gues i HAVE learnt my lesson now, everything shall be backed up on the external harddrive i already have....
Crenshaw
i couldnt see the blue screen , cos its set to auto retstart if startup fails. And i couldnt find the option to turn it off.
i gues i HAVE learnt my lesson now, everything shall be backed up on the external harddrive i already have....
Crenshaw
cdosrun
Enlightened
I'm sorry that you lost everything Crenshaw, that is really unfortunate and could only have been worse if your drive suffered from the click of death.
You might want to try a Linux CD/USB bootable environment for recovering from that sort of problem in the future. Whilst not a panacea, they have saved my bacon on a few occasions. I keep a USB memory stick with a bootable Knoppix install but have also used Gentoo etc which do the job.
Andrew
You might want to try a Linux CD/USB bootable environment for recovering from that sort of problem in the future. Whilst not a panacea, they have saved my bacon on a few occasions. I keep a USB memory stick with a bootable Knoppix install but have also used Gentoo etc which do the job.
Andrew
Install windows WHITOUT formating, may be you lost some program configuratios, but you documents will survive.
Also try to search for systersnals boot cd or a bootable linux distribution from cd. With it you can see your hard drive and copy the documents.
Another solution is open the lantop, extract the CD and put in in a HDD case conected to a standarpc, so you can boot normally other windows and see the lantop HD to copy files.
Everything point to a windows failure, not an HD failure, so your data should be fine.
Another option is opening the gost file with other computer, not sure if gost allow it, but other similar tools yes (acronis true image, for example)
Good luck, but remember DONT do a format if you want to recover you files.
Also try to search for systersnals boot cd or a bootable linux distribution from cd. With it you can see your hard drive and copy the documents.
Another solution is open the lantop, extract the CD and put in in a HDD case conected to a standarpc, so you can boot normally other windows and see the lantop HD to copy files.
Everything point to a windows failure, not an HD failure, so your data should be fine.
Another option is opening the gost file with other computer, not sure if gost allow it, but other similar tools yes (acronis true image, for example)
Good luck, but remember DONT do a format if you want to recover you files.
Marduke
Flashaholic
Or you can boot the laptop with a LiveCD such as Knoppix and just copy your data from the laptop to external HDD
If you can get for enough to get a blue screen of death, then its not the worst case.
At least the bootloader is still loading from the HD.
Boot from your windows cd, go into the recovery console and take a look at whats still there.
Otherwise, use some disk rescue software _after_ you cloned the HD.
And please backup in the future. Especially self-created stuff. Any HD could die any second...
PhantomPhoton
Flashlight Enthusiast
+1
Live CDs have saved my but a couple times and I've saved a lot of friend's data in this way. Doesn't always work depending on the problem but a live CD/ USB stick always my first troubleshooting step.
thanks for the help guys, but like i said damage has already been done. But its okay i guess, all the DSLR stuff is with my friend, cos we took the photos mainly at his house. I have accepted that i lost a fair bit of data, but most of it was not irreplaceable.
I guess i should have waited before ghosting back to fresh OS...
but then i dont really know anyone with alot of experience with linux, and my DVD drive (external) burnt out for god knows what reason, so putting in the windows CD (which i dont have anyway) wouldnt have worked.
i really WAS just asking for my data to be lost wasnt I?
Crenshaw
I guess i should have waited before ghosting back to fresh OS...
but then i dont really know anyone with alot of experience with linux, and my DVD drive (external) burnt out for god knows what reason, so putting in the windows CD (which i dont have anyway) wouldnt have worked.
i really WAS just asking for my data to be lost wasnt I?
Crenshaw
etc
Flashlight Enthusiast
Take the number of copies you have, subtract one and that's
how much data you have.
how much data you have.
Marduke
Flashaholic
You don't need any experience with Linux to use a LiveCD. If you know how to burn an ISO to a CD, you're pretty much good to go. Nothing to build and no text commands to worry about. It looks and runs pretty much like windows on the surface, and it's very straight forward to copy files from one HDD to another (copy/paste, or drag and drop).
You definitely should burn Knoppix and/or Ubuntu and keep a copy handy. Spending less than an hour to download and burn them, and 20 minutes to familiarize yourself with them can be a lifesaver months down the road.
You definitely should burn Knoppix and/or Ubuntu and keep a copy handy. Spending less than an hour to download and burn them, and 20 minutes to familiarize yourself with them can be a lifesaver months down the road.
yeah but see, the problem is dont want to have to backup everytime i take a picture, rip a CD for the Mp3s, install a new game, or whatever...
but i guess like everyone says, the only data you get to keep is the data you back up
Crenshaw
but i guess like everyone says, the only data you get to keep is the data you back up
Crenshaw
PhantomPhoton
Flashlight Enthusiast
A linux live cd isn't a backup at all. It is just a way of accessing the hardware on your computer without having to use windows (or a hard drive). If windows (or some other OS) crashes and you want to pull files off of the hard drive before you nuke it a live CD allows you to do just that. Copy files to a different drive, different partition, cd/dvd, thumb drive, or online storage.
Furthermore you don't even need a CD anymore for many computers. With a little bit 'o reading you can install linux onto a thumb drive. Personally I am enjoying Slax for a nice compact thumb drive distro.
Furthermore you don't even need a CD anymore for many computers. With a little bit 'o reading you can install linux onto a thumb drive. Personally I am enjoying Slax for a nice compact thumb drive distro.
Marduke
Flashaholic
With your external HDD, just set it up to automatically back up everything. It'll keep your data safe and secure without you having to do anything.
The LiveCD is just to allow you to access your computer when your OS goes in the crapper. It does not use your operating system whatsoever. As long as you have a working CD drive, you can boot into Linux, and copy data off the bad hard drive in question to a good hard drive.
The LiveCD is just to allow you to access your computer when your OS goes in the crapper. It does not use your operating system whatsoever. As long as you have a working CD drive, you can boot into Linux, and copy data off the bad hard drive in question to a good hard drive.
