I dont know if this is the right thread, but here goes.
I try to start my Dell Inspiron 5010 laptop and I get "A disk read error occurred. Press Ctrl Alt Del to recover"
Every page I've Googled about this error tells me my hard drive is shot and needs to be replaced. I'm in total denial so, can this really be? Have I lost all my data?
Does the hard drive need to be gutted and replaced?
Thanks.
Hello there and welcome to the forums Doomdaddy!
If you want to be absolutely sure whether your drive is gutted/or still recoverable, try and pull it out of the laptop and place it into an external USB caddy/enclosure, and plug it into a working system to see whether the system can detect it or not...
You can also try to reseat the the drive in the laptop by taking it out and putting it back in again after a cold shutdown..
Hope that helps!
OK. Before you try to pullout the hard drive or do anything else:
Sometimes even when Windows fails to read the hard disk, Linux can. So try to read it with a live Linux CD and see whether you can recover the data.
Puppy Linux is easy. Lucid Puppy way to recover files from a non-bootable computer
Does the laptop have a built-in diagnostics utility? That might be your easiest bet in performing hard drive diagnostics. When you boot the laptop, press F12 when the first Dell screen appears. That should get you to some options that say Diagnostics or Boot to Utility Partition or something like that where it should be evident to test the hard drive or system itself.
Yes, run the Dell Diagnostics first of all. If it won't run download and run it from a flash stick or CD here: Dell DIagnostics downoad
You can cross check using the HD maker's HD Diagnostic extended CD scan, followed by Disk Check run from the Win7 DVD or Repair CD Command Line accessed via System Recovery Options or free Partition Wizard bootable CD.
If the HD is still seen in BIOS setup, you may be able to copy out your files using Copy & Paste - in Windows Recovery Console or Paragon rescue disk to recover data.
Always keep your data backed up externally. I keep my User folders synched to cloud storage using Sync Any Folder to SkyDrive which offers 7gb free cloud storage for each Windows Live/Hotmail ID.
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