Help-a-noob 101

[LA_MERC_goose]

Ok, buddy brings me his DELL ... here's your sign. He says he has a hard time getting it to boot and sometimes gets a blue screen.

"Great, this should be fun"

Hook the thing up to my spare system and boot it ... the Windows XP loading window statyed there for close to 5 minutes. Then I got some crappy ass message about not being able to read every freaking sector on the disk. So, I pulled the drive ... "SATA, great".

Hook the drive into my main system and boot, and my system gripes about the drive before I even get to my login screen. Wants to verify the drive ... damn piece of $#!t. I cancelled it just to get in and tried to look at the contents of the disk and hope to pull pictures and mp3s off before I deep-6 the disk ... nope, it hates me.

So, I put it back in the DELL and try to boot it again ... got a lovely blue screen with a very descriptive message ... please, if you think I'm serious at this point I'd like for you to close the screen and don't even bother to respond :mad: Anyway, the message displayed was ***STOP 0x00000024 (four more addresses but why bother)

So I'm guessing at this point the drive is toast. Does anyone have any suggestions for someway to possibly get the man's pictures and mp3s from the disk without having to rob a freaking bank to pay some overpriced asshole in a cubicle to do it for me?

**I love my job, I love my job, I love my job **

[LA_MERC_Maverick]

put in the freezer overnight

[LA_MERC_Onji]

put the drive in as a slave, or secondary drive and use 'getdataback' its saved me before
http://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-software.htm

[LA_MERC_Captain_Obvious]

recently my main drive went out on me at work (WD 150gb raptor SATA)
I got an external enclosure
booted up another PC
plugged in the old C drive as an external drive
used some cheep / free recovery programs (Toby was able to help me out with this) to access the old C drive and recover everything.

[LA_MERC_th33_r00k]

I would check disk it in your main machine. A lot of times a good ol' check disk by a good machine will correct some inconsistencies.

I also have used Get Data Back and it is a great program.

Does the drive show up in the "My Computer" screen on your machine?
If it does, what is its description if any? size, make, etc....

Partition Table Doctor does a good job checking the surface and sectors.

Also...if the drive is failing and you get a shot at recovery, use robocopy via command prompt. It clowns on anything for speed copying. I put in root so I can find it easy. Go to cmd -> go to "C:\" -> type [robocopy "source" "destination" /e /r:0] for all sub directories and no retries. -> watch sh1t fly by quickly.

[LA_MERC_eX1|eS' ch1|d]

If you think the drive is acting up due to overheating the freezer usually does work until it defreezes and over heats again.

Throw in your OS disk and boot to it, do a repair and run check disk. Sometimes that will work.

What is the Dell make and model? If you have the Maxtor thin hard drive they are notoriously crappy, I think they came in GX270's.

Good luck.

[LA_MERC_MadMAX]

...some overpriced asshole in a cubicle...


Hey! I resemble that remark!

j/k


Mav's right about the freezer thing - I've had that work for me on several occasions.

Also, if you don't feel froggy enough to try that, a good 'ol chkdsk /r might do the trick.

[LA_MERC_th33_r00k]

Hey! I resemble that remark!

j/k


Mav's right about the freezer thing - I've had that work for me on several occasions.

Also, if you don't feel froggy enough to try that, a good 'ol chkdsk /r might do the trick.

I work in a cave jackass @ Goose!. I got paid $35.00 yesterday to push the power button. LMAO.

[LA_MERC_goose]

Ok guys ... drive's FUBAR. Unexpected error in sector is the error I get no matter what I try. chkdsk won't even recognize the drive is there, neither does defrag or explorer.

I think it's official, door stop.

Thanks guys ... you all suck!



I mean rock ... you all rock. That was my inside voice. :D

[LA_MERC_FragFood]

Sorry, I got into this thread late...

1. Get a build of a BartPE CD.
2. Install the drive back in the POS Dell as it was originally
3. Boot to BIOS and set to boot from CD
4. Boot to BartPE CD
5. Play around with some of the recovery utilities there

+ If it's an overheating problem, the odds are that it's the IDE/SATA controller chip on the controller board of the drive:

1. Power down
2. Get a "can of air" with the red extension straw on it
3. Place the drive upside down on a nonconductive surface, with it still connected to the machine
4. Turn the can of air upside down and squeeze the trigger a little bit - you should get a stream/drops of liquid freon out of the tube
5. Superchill the various chips on the controller board - I mean it - until there's actually FROST on them
6. Fire up the PC and check to see which chip thaws first - usually it's one of the ones closest to the data connector
7. Keep on that chip and keep it nice and chilly - while seeing if the machine boots.

If it does, use your third and fourth hands to start copying stuff off, while keeping the chip(s) cold. If it "kinda works," try it as a secondary drive on a working machine, using the cooling process.

+ If all else fails, GetDataBack is truly worth the effort.

This is the short version of a procedure I wrote to recover data off a bad batch of drives that IBM put in their A40 desktop machines a few years back. All Maxtors, and they all had a defective component on them that caused the primary controller ship to overheat and throw errors to hell and gone. Worked 95+% of the time on those drives, but there was an obvious problem with them.

Hope some of that helped.

[LA_MERC_T4rg3T]

There is data recovery software that I put on the ftp that actually works better when Windows does not detect the hard drive. You should do like the others said and set it as a slave drive but use the recovery software to pull the data from it.

I think the software is called EasyRecovery

[LA_MERC_th33_r00k]

My only thing to add is to boot into Recovery console and FIXMBR and FIXBOOT. Most recovery programs feed off the drive recognition. You give them a closet to look in and they are good at cleaning it out.

Partition Table Doctor is also worth the shot. It rebuilds the Partition tables and can also fix boot. You can build a bootable floppy by running it on a good machine. Put that floppy in the dell and give it a whirl. I do not think you should call it over yet.

[LA_MERC_eX1|eS' ch1|d]

Do what these ^^ people tell you.


Keep fighting the good fight Goose!

[LA_MERC_goose]

Toby, do you remember where you put that program? I can't find it.

[LA_MERC_Onji]

mines better

[LA_MERC_T4rg3T]

I think Onji deleted it so you would use his program. Its up on the ftp under drive3/apps

[LA_MERC_Onji]

did not!

[LA_MERC_goose]

I tried your program Onji ... but it wouldn't recognize the drive.

Gonna try Toby's and then call it a death.

[LA_MERC_th33_r00k]

Do not call it death mano. Not yet.

Have you tried Partition Table Doctor? or http://www.lamerc.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=19037 "SpinRite"?

Do it up.


I tried your program Onji ... but it wouldn't recognize the drive.

Gonna try Toby's and then call it a death.

Did you try to fixmbr and fixboot before running this? Give the drive a placeholder(drive letter) and GetDataBack will do it. I have used it a few times and it has not failed. I even recovered some stuff after a full format and reload of XP on an acer.