Dropped Laptop, Need Help Recovering Data

[Lilbaby]

I dropped my laptop by accident and need to recover the hard drive.

I have vista on the computer. I bought a new laptop and tried putting the hard drive into it and got

1) it didn't work. it wouldn't start up
2) some of the stuff said it was okay then we got an error
3) so then ran one of those scans on the memory and hard disk
4) memory passed
5) it said replace hard disk
6) then when I went to install windows on it when it told me to choose where to install it to it wasn't there it's like it didn't reconigize any drive at all

I took it into a computer repair store and they told me "when in one of their computers its able to reconize the partions and read the names off of them but anytime it tries to acces either of them it freaks out and freezes. Everything is still on there but their guess is that the arm on the drive is broken and can't read anything off of it." They said the files should be recoverable through them but would cost $800 or $1300.

Any suggestions on how to get my data?
Would using Knoppix work? If so how do I do this?

Thanks

[Harry Kuhman]

Any suggestions on how to get my data?
Would using Knoppix work? If so how do I do this?

1) Don't double post in the forums. Imagine how cluttered things would be if everyone who thought their issue was important did that. Pick whatever forum you think best fits the problem and post there. If a moderator see that it would fit better elsewhere he may move it for you.

2) I sure hope the guys that you took this to didn't make things worse (they often do).

3) Knoppix may very well help, but you have to participate. I suggest reading through the wiki found through the documentation link at the top of this page. There you should find information on how to download the files, check the iso, and properly burn a disc. Then put the hard drive in a computer, insert the optical disc of Koppix and boot Knoppix. From there you should be able to determine if Knoppix can read the disk. If so you have a number of options for recovering files, including transferring them to another computer on a network, writing them to a USB flash drive and even e-mailing them to yourself (and other ways). I'm not going to write you an entire book on how to use Knoppix here, but the information you want is all on this site.

[Lilbaby]

Could I just put the hard drive leave the hard drive in my laptop and put the disk in and try to recover the data that way?

[kaspare]

I dropped my laptop by accident and need to recover the hard drive.

I have vista on the computer. I bought a new laptop and tried putting the hard drive into it and got

1) it didn't work. it wouldn't start up
2) some of the stuff said it was okay then we got an error
3) so then ran one of those scans on the memory and hard disk
4) memory passed
5) it said replace hard disk
6) then when I went to install windows on it when it told me to choose where to install it to it wasn't there it's like it didn't reconigize any drive at all

I took it into a computer repair store and they told me "when in one of their computers its able to reconize the partions and read the names off of them but anytime it tries to acces either of them it freaks out and freezes. Everything is still on there but their guess is that the arm on the drive is broken and can't read anything off of it." They said the files should be recoverable through them but would cost $800 or $1300.

Any suggestions on how to get my data?
Would using Knoppix work? If so how do I do this?

Thanks

Hi,

I suppose you did a smart (smartctl in linux) test and this failed with "replace hard disk".

If you HD is phisically damaged (...any clanck noise??..) you should stop to test it and do a bitstream copy of the all drive.

I suggest ddrescue ( http://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/ddrescue.html ), I don't know if knoppix has it but it's not difficult to install it anyway.

Put you HD in a pc with another hd with enought free space to contain the image of the first one.
Ddrescue is very simple:
ddrescue [options] infile outfile [logfile]

Man ddrescue for the option, infile is /dev/damaged_hd ( a device ) outfile is the full path of the file name that will be created in the new hd.

For example
ddrescue /dev/hda /media/new_hd/old_disk.dd

Remember to provide a path and a file name for the outfile, if you provide a device ( like infile) you loose all the data in that device.

Good luck

Max