Hard drive problems, need help
Wed, 2008-01-16 18:32
hi all,
So my HD is a 300GB Sata II and last week it decided to act up. It restarts itself at the the windows loading screen, if i start in safe mode, it restarts when it loads the "mup.sys" drivers. So i decided to try to re-install windows without formatting, first it said there wasnt a previous version of windows on it, then it worked, installed fine except for the part of telling me it only held 8.72GB. SO i rebooted it, and then it went back to the old problem of not getting by the loading screen.
I took it out of my PC and put it into a 2nd PC and it does the same thing. So i bought an HD enclosure kit. When i click on the drive it says its corrupted and unreadable. Please tell me theres a way to save some of my files...please..
What filesystem did it use? NTFS?
i think the new windows installed as FAT over the NTFS
Are you able to use a liveCD (like knoppix, PCLinux, Mandriva Move, SimplyMepis, etc)? I.e., see knoppix hack is a classic
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/knoppixhks/
There are also stuffs designed for data recovery.
http://www.sysresccd.org/ (non-commercial; SystemRescueCd)
http://www.mondorescue.org/ (non-commercial; Mondo)
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk (non-commercial; TestDisk)
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec (non-commercial; PhotoRec)
https://grc.com/ (commercial; SpinRite)
Sheng-Chieh
p.s. I used System RescueCD (a liveCD) to reformat my disk - nice system - but never to restore data.
Does the drive make clicking noises? Cause in that case you're ******d.
In any case (even the clicking case), your best chances of recovering any data from the drive are with sending it to a data recovery company... That's very expensive though.
If you're going to try to get the data off the disk yourself, and you're not successful using a liveCD, you can put the drive in the freezer (in a sealed box of course) for a day and then quickly try the same thing again. Not kidding, this does temporarily work around some hardware problem. If that works, copy your important data as quickly as you can, cause your disk is going to be even more damaged once it gets warm.
there are no clicking sounds at all, its for sure a windows install problem as the computer powered down during an install prolly screwing it up huge. I will try the live cd method and get back to you all. Thanks !