need help on getting data off my hard drive

ust yesterday my 4 yr old toshiba a75-205 woud not boot up and was giving me the blue screen saying "unmountable boot volume"

Im not really sure how to fix it since I had my motherboard replaced a few years ago and now the recovery CD that comes with the laptop is saying "wrong machine"

any tips on what to do to fix this or atleast recover my data from my hard drive???

I was thinking of getting a usb external enclosure for my laptop hard drive and hooking it up to another pc to get the data i needed, do you think it would work even if it wont boot up on my laptop?

 

Swap the HDD out as you suggested and try to recover the data. Chances are that with the motherboard replacement, the recovery disc has detected some incompatiblity that results in the message you described.

Has it booted properly with that motherboard before?

 

Placing the drive in an external enclosure will certainly work
-- make sure you get the proper one if you go that way.

It is certainly a 2.5 inch drive, but you will need to determine if it is a sata or ide drive to determine the right enclosure (though some take both)

However, generally speaking, an unmountable boot volume error is a sign of file system corruption. You can fix that and get your system back

Step 1

download RC.iso from the following link:

http://www.thecomputerparamedic.com/rc.iso

You need to burn this image to a CD and boot your computer with it--this is different than burning a file to a CD. If you do not know how to burn an ISO image, then download the following program to another Windows XP machine, install it.

make certain you download the proper installation for your version of windows. Open MY COMPUTER, choose HELP > ABOUT. Note the service pack and get the appropriate version of the iso burner power toy

http://isorecorder.alexfeinman.com/isorecorder.htm

After installation, reboot, then right click the RC.iso file you downloaded above and choose COPY IMAGE TO CD.

Then reboot your broken PC with that CD in the CD-ROM drive. (make sure your BIOS designates the CD_ROM as your first boot device)

This will give you a recovery console to use to run


STEP 2

When boot begins, a windows setup will appear to start, but instead you will be taken to a recovery console.

You will need to select your windows installation by pressing a number, most likely 1

Windows will ask you for a password

If you have XP home, press enter...there is no password

If you have XP Pro, you need to enter the password you set when you installed your machine with XP Pro.

After entering the password, you will find yourself at a command prompt that looks like this

c:\windows

type
chkdsk /r
<enter>

follow the prompts, then when it is complete, remove the CD


type
EXIT

<enter>


the machine will reboot

Windows should start. If not, try the above again.

If it fails the third time, go with the enclosure idea

 

as far as my HD goes it says its an ATA/IDE... i assume its a 2.5.

 

Yes, when they replaced the motherboard it worked fine

 

bought a extrenal hdd enclosure and it worked great and fast through my roomates macbook, but wont work through my work computer or Gfs laptop(sony vaio)

 

What file system is it formated as?

 

not sure how to answer ur question, but it was on my notebook which was on windows XP... does that answer ur question???


its weird it would show up on my roomates macbook within 4 sec...but on my gfs vaio and on my work comp. it just woudnt load , it would take a few mins to show up on "my computer" then it would end up going on " not responding" and I would have to " end task"

 

do your work and GFs girlfriend's computers have USB 1.0 ports? Your friends macbook has a usb 2.0 port

 

how can I tell if its 1.0 or 2.0 usb???

Thanks in advance

 

ok now i tried it on another dell laptop and did the same thing... wont connect at all , i cant get access to my files.... its weird cause it hooks right up on the macbook