toshiba hdd errors

cosw0rth · 15 May 2012

hi please help i have a toshiba satellite l350 and when i switched it on the other day just a black screen with cursor anyway to cut a long story short i have bought a communictor c1 to plug the hdd into my sony vaio running windows 7 it will find the drive but takes a long time it then shows the drive as to drives g: and h: if i try and access them my computer says not accessible if i try and format them it says i cant format them i have been trying to get some pictures off the drive but i have spent about 3 days on it now and i just want to get the laptop back up and running i do have a recovery disc that i made when i got the laptop but if i put the hdd back into the laptop and load the recovery discs it never gets past the format drive section after picking your language and english windows 7 oe im pretty good with computers and understand the basics i have tried to get into the command prompt and find the drive but if i get in to cmd it only allows me into x:>sources im presuming this is my ram and not actually the hdd i also have a windows 7 install disc but when it gets to the section where you pick your windows there is nothing there and asks to load the drivers which i have no idea where they can be found any help would be glady appreciated
thanks
simon

TVeblen · 15 May 2012

Hello cosw0rth. Welcome to the Forum.

First, take a deep breath and calm down! If you had been successful with any of the procedures you have tried you would have destroyed your data.

First, go here: Downloads and download the Hitachi Drive Fitness test: CD IMAGE. You will need a second (working) PC. Double click the ISO (in W7) to burn a bootable CD. (Note: Toshiba doesn't have it's own diagnostic for bootable CD, but the DFT will work just as well).

Then change the boot order on the problem machine (from BIOS settings which I assume you can still get into) to boot from the CD first. Put the CD in the tray and restart. Run the test and see if it can 1) see the drive, or 2) determine it's condition.

If you need to try and retrieve data then hook the drive up to the other PC again and download and run RECUVA to try. Recuva - Undelete, Unerase, File and Disk Recovery - Free Download

cosw0rth · 19 May 2012

hi thanks for the reply ive been a bit busy past few days so not been sorting my laptop ok im at a different stage now for some reason the drive is now formatted well thats what i think its sayin its says unallocated space being almost the full 250gb i have placed the drive back into the toshiba and ive tried running the recovery discs it comes up with x:\windows\system32\cmd.exe screen and then says this
the command completed successfully
system disk is DISK0
secind disk not available
checking for drive W:....
DRIVE W: not mounted --> no unmount needed
checking for drive c:...
c: unmounted!
checking for drive V: not mounted -->no unmount needed
try to remove all letters from potential partitions on hdd0 ...
try to remove all letters from potential partitions on hdd1 ...

it then goes threw some install stage but then says unable to install
press any key to contiune then reboots back to hdd which then says no boot

hope this helps i just want to format everything now and get the drive working back in laptop if you can help

thanks
simon

TVeblen · 19 May 2012

Just be aware that if you "just reformat everything" that you will be left with a blank hard drive and you will need to reinstall Windows and all of your programs and restore all of your user data from your backups.

You could wipe the drive clean using Windows Diskpart utility - CLEAN ALL command, then format it if you are comfortable with keyboard commands.
(Note: you could try just the CLEAN command if you needed to try and recover data)
Command Prompt at Startup

Disk - Clean and Clean All with Diskpart Command

Use Option 2: Partition or Volume - Create New

Or you could download and burn the bootable CD of Partition Wizard and use that if you would rather have a graphical user interface.
Free Partition Magic alternative, partition manager freeware, partition magic server, partition magic Windows 7 and free Partition Manager software for Windows 7/8/VISTA/XP/2000 and Windows Server 2003/2008/2000.

If neither utility can recognize or work with the drive then there is a real possibility the drive is dead.

cosw0rth · 19 May 2012

thanks im going to try it now and will let you know the outcome

cosw0rth · 19 May 2012

ok i have used the partition wizard i have the drive connected to my working laptop i have created a partition onthe drive it has 8mb at the beginning that says unallocated the G: NTFS 232.9 (100% used)

is this where i need to be to be able to put back in the toshiba laptop ?

cheers
simon

TVeblen · 19 May 2012

Yes, you should be good to go.
Do not worry about that 8MB unallocated. It is used for 'housekeeping' purposes.

cosw0rth · 19 May 2012

so do i put in the recovery disc and run as a recovery or put in the windows 7 disc and reinstall as a new?

cheers

TVeblen · 19 May 2012

That is completely up to you.

Personally I will always install W7 fresh. The recovery disk will load all the bloatware and crap that comes pre-installed and slows the PC down.

However, if there is some free program that came pre-installed that you want back then you might opt to do the recovery and then do a major clean up afterward.

cosw0rth · 19 May 2012

hi ok update i put windows 7 in boot from cd and then it says loading files along the bottom then microsoft at the bottom with the green bar going backwards and forwards then goes to a blank screen with a cursor ?

si