Is My HDD Completely Dead? I/O Device Error

boweasel · 01 Nov 2016

We have a Dell laptop Running Windows 7 Professional that has been a real workhorse. Just the other day it refused to boot, taking us into the Repair screen. On the repair screen that displays Windows installations it did show Windows 7 Professional (as the D: drive), but after 'repairing' for at least 90 minutes it ultimately said that the computer could be fixed by this method. I then got out my 64 bit W7 Pro disk and tried again with identical results. This time I went to the advanced options command prompt. When I entered D: at the prompt I got the dreaded request could not be performed because of an I/O device error.

Undeterred, I removed the drive from the laptop and hooked it up as a slave to another computer. It popped up on other PC as the E: drive, but when I opened an administrative prompt and typed in E:, I got that same I/O error message.

Now I'm stumped. How is it that Windows shows up as a valid OS through the repairs, but the drive is inaccessible? I don't mind getting a new drive and reinstalling, but there's a fair amount of stuff that had never been backed up.

Additionally, I get this odd message when I try to perform a chkdsk without actually accessing the drive directly

samuria · 01 Nov 2016

It's saying it's raw which means it's lost the partition table you need specific partition recovery software which should get it back don't use file recovery nothing is deleted once partition is back fikes will be there. The io error can be disk,cable or port

boweasel · 01 Nov 2016

Thanks! Any recommendations on partition recovery software? Preferably free?

Megahertz07 · 01 Nov 2016

Don't try to fix it or you may loose all your data.
Ask Jumanji for help. He is the disk guru. https://www.sevenforums.com/members/jumanji.html

samuria · 01 Nov 2016

A few if one doesnt work try another Downloading Active@ Partition Recovery: Freeware Data Recovery Software Download

jumanji · 01 Nov 2016

Hold on. It is definitely not a partition lost problem. If the partition is lost, it won't show your 450GB partition as healthy primary . It would appear that either the VBR or MFT has gone corrupt.

Just do not do anything now. Today I am little busy after a 3 day holiday trip. Just wait till I pickup steam and give further instructions.

@Samuria, RAW does not necessarily mean that the partition table has been lost. ( It could be one reason but in this case it is not.)

jumanji · 01 Nov 2016

Is yout local time shown 23:48 correct?

If so you can go to sleep and see my instructions your tomorrow morning.

jumanji · 02 Nov 2016

OK. here we go.

You have now hooked up your 500 GB laptop drive as an internal drive on another desktop. Right?

On that desktop - which I presume is running Windows 7 - please plugout all other external drives/pendrives /USB hubs/external card readers/ printers with USB ports etc,. In short, nothing connected to the USB ports except your USB Keyboard/mouse.

Now would you mind posting an untruncated screenshot of Windows Disk Management? Follow the guidelines here Disk Management - Post a Screen Capture Image

Next download TestDisk for Windows from here TestDisk Download - CGSecurity the second one in the list and extract it to the root of C: ( you can also extract it to any other partition on your system drive). You will be running testdisk_win.exe in the folder testdisk-7.0.

Do you have an external drive with sufficient space to copy all data from the faulty drive in case we decide to do that when running Test Disk?

If yes then create a folder named recovery in that external drive which will be your destination to back up the data.

When you are ready let me know.

Note: Do not experiment with TestDisk on your own. Please wait for my step by step instructions, TestDisk is highly interactive and we may have to decide what command should be given based on what TestDisk shows in each screen as we proceed.

boweasel · 02 Nov 2016

jumanji said:

OK. here we go.

You have now hooked up your 500 GB laptop drive as an internal drive on another desktop. Right?

I don't know how specific you are with your language - I took the drive from the laptop and used one of those little USB caddies, attaching a power cable from a working W7 tower to the power connector on the drive, and the data part to a cable plugged into a USB port on that tower. Whether that makes it an internal or an external drive, I dunno, I just know that after I plugged it into the USB port two new drives displayed on the W7 tower - one was labeled K: and was the recovery partition from the laptop Hard drive, while the other was the E: drive which corresponded to the C: drive on the laptop.

jumanji said:

On that desktop - which I presume is running Windows 7 - please plugout all other external drives/pendrives /USB hubs/external card readers/ printers with USB ports etc,. In short, nothing connected to the USB ports except your USB Keyboard/mouse.

Now would you mind posting an untruncated screenshot of Windows Disk Management? Follow the guidelines here Disk Management - Post a Screen Capture Image

Assuming that I have the laptop's drive hooked up to the tower okay, I have to get off this laptop, go upstairs to that W7 tower with the USB caddy and navigate to this forum. Once I do that I'll attach another screenshot.

I can unplug everything from the tower except for the USB wireless adapter. It has no internal adapter and the router is on a different floor.

jumanji · 02 Nov 2016

Ok, you have some contraption and connecting the laptop drive through an USB port on a tower. That makes it an externally connected drive. Anyway it hardly matters.

With only that laptop drive connected to your Tower, take a Full screenshot of Windows Disk Management and post.. You can have your wireless adapter , USB Mouse and Keyboard. Only no other storage devices, card readers and USB hubs. Your Windows Disk Management will show your System drive and any other internal drives plus your external USB connected laptop drive ( and of course the optical drives ). If I know the configuration from that I can draft my instructions more precisely.

As stated earlier download and extract TestDisk on to your tower.

Also please note my local time in the post and try to come early on so that a dialog can be maintained.. It is bedtime for me now and you will see me again only after another 8 to 10 hours, that is my tomorrow morning. I just peeped in before hitting the sack.