Solved Droped Dell laptop, will not boot, removed HDD but

[notsmartenough]

Start up disks will not boot computer. After removing HDD I put it in a external HDD case, plugged the usb into another computer running win 7 also. It reads the 3 partitions I had on the disk, but I can't see anything but the drive letters on the disk. chkdidk will not work, it says can not access disk. There is only one document that I need on the drive, rest is backed up Darn, Hope you can help. Thanks

 

[marsmimar]

Hello nse and welcome to Seven Forums.

Sorry to hear about your misfortune. From what you've described it sounds like the read/write heads have been rendered inoperable. It could be the heads themselves or something else that controls the movement of the heads across the platters. (The actuator arms, the motor that powers the arms, the spindle that spins the platters or its motor, or even something in the electronics of the printed circuit board that contains the power and data cable connections, etc.)



You could try a free program called Recuva but I'm not very optimistic. If the read/write heads aren't working it may take a professional recovery service (that usually charges hundreds of dollars) to get your document off the hard drive.

Recuva - Undelete, Unerase, File and Disk Recovery - Free Download

 

[Britton30]

All I can add to what marsmimar has said is to try a HDD diagnostic to see what it says about the drive, good/bad. There are several here, find one for your brand, or use Seatools.
Hard Drive Diagnostic Procedure

If the laptop was running when you dropped it the HDD is most likely not recoverable.
A drive can sustain a 1000G non-cycling shock for1-2 micro seconds when off. When running this figure is 300G-350G. Info from Seagate Momentus page.

 

[edwar]

Simple fact is the drive is Damaged and Dead. You will not get that one document unless you send the drive to a Data Recovery Service. Which is very expensive and it will take a few weeks or a month or more to get that one file.

 

[notsmartenough]

Hi Thanks for the advice. I finally got time to download the 2 programs, one from Sea Gate the manufacture of the HDD. Neither was able to get me any info. What is frustrating is the HDD is running and the partitions come up, but no info. As a last resort can you disassemble the HDD and do any thing to make it work?

 

[pebbly]

Hi Thanks for the advice. I finally got time to download the 2 programs, one from Sea Gate the manufacture of the HDD. Neither was able to get me any info. What is frustrating is the HDD is running and the partitions come up, but no info. As a last resort can you disassemble the HDD and do any thing to make it work?

Hi notsmartenough, You cannot dissasemble a HDD as they are hermatically sealed ,One grain of dust can render them useless , I have heard you can freeze a HDD and sometimes this will allow you to get data off Don't know personnally if it does work :shock:

 

[edwar]

Simple fact is that in the drop the HDD was damaged. If there is any data on it the HDD heads, the things that READ the DATA, can't READ any of it. It can only be retrieved by a data recovery service. And I would NOT trust that drive anymore. You Need to Replace it.

 

[notsmartenough]

Thanks all

 

[Britton30]

You're welcome, let us know how it goes.