Help me….my hard disk is damaged!!!

[staffi8963]

Hi everyone , I am employed as a manager in a firm. I have a problem that I had like to talk about. My system was working fine the other day, but while copying a file by nero….the system hanged and I had to restart it. But I got a disk boot failure error. Then , I tried to run a windows xp installation CD, but that is also showing some error message during installation and the installation fails.I did check the bios settings and the disk fails to show…and had it checked on another system also…but bios cannot detect the hard disk.I think the disk is damaged or something like that.The disk has important data from my company’s point of view…..that I need to recover.
Please let me know if there are any ways to get my data back from this disk!!!!

[crenn]

Is the drive spinning up?

[nevermind1534]

You can buy an identical drive on ebay, take the chip off of the bottom and put it on the broken one, and that should work, if nothing is happening with it right now.

[Cannibal23]

i do this all the time at my work. the best way for you to get your data will be to attach your drive to another computer as a slave disk rather then trying to boot from it. if you are having issues getting the pc to recognise the disk nevermind's suggestion is a good one. please keep in mind though that if this disk has already failed, even if you get it running again with nevermind's solution its best to get your data off and then go shopping for a new drive instead of risking it with the old one.

[Luke122]

The BIOS does not recognize the drive at all? It could be a loose cable.. I would start with that. Confirm that the cables are firmly plugged in (while powered off of course!), you can even unplug them and reconnect them to ensure they are solid.

If the BIOS recognizes it now, you can proceed to below. If not, disassembling the drive is risky, and could potentially destroy anything that is on it, or at least render it inaccessable. If it's important data, consider a professional recovery. Pricey yes, but you'll get your info back.

First of all, Crenn's question of "Is the drive spinning?" is a good place to start. If the drive is making noise, that's a good sign. The type of noise is makes will help identify the problem. If it's a whirring sound, good. If it's a clicking sound, maybe bad. (Maybe!)

Whirring means it's spinning up, clicking means that it's having trouble accessing a sector or spinning. Clicking generally isnt a good sign, but it's not always a serious symptom. I have one drive that clicked right from new, and it's still working fine years later. (I just dont really trust it for important stuff.) ;)

There are software tools out there that can help with clicking/unreadable drives. One of them that I've had great success with is called Spinrite (http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm). It's not a shareware program, and costs $89, but you can use it on as many computers as you want, and it's a great tool to have around in case of any future problems. I've managed to recover 9 out of 10 hard drives with it, so it's easily worth the money.

All you do is download it to a cd, then boot from the cd and run the program. It will automatically scan the disk and repair any errors it finds. Very easy, and relativelly fast. I cant say enough good things about it! :D

Your other option (and cheaper too) is to run the Windows install disk, and choose the "Repair" option. It should scan the disk, and attempt to fix any problems it encounters. If it's just data corruption, this usually works very quickly and easily.

[harry326]

I think that your disk is probably damaged …cannot guess any other reason for failure.There may be some problem in the controllers or can be another thing.The best way is to get a professional team that can recover data from damaged drives (http://www.diskemergency.com/) . They can be your best resort as they have tools and ways to get the things done.

All the best to you.

[Crazy Buddhist]

I'd go with Harry on this one. If the data is important let your company pay a data recovery company to do the do for you. You might just make things worse otherwise.

CrazyB

[nevermind1534]

If the solution with the new chip doesn't work and I really needed the data, I think that I would go for the professional recovery, too.