HELP! Crash!

So my Inspiron 1520 hard drive crashed. Called Dell Support and they told me the only options I have are to reload OS or replace hard drive. But both options mean my hard drive contents are lost. Is there anything I can do to salvage hard drive? Will my Dell warranty cover the cost of recovery? I'm not getting much help from Dell's tech support. I thought they were supposed to be one of the best. Thanks

 

There isn't much you can do reactively for a hard drive crash; you need to be proactive and backup your data. You can put it in an external enclosure and try to access the data that way. No the warranty won't cover the cost of recovery, it is usually in the thousands of dollars depending on what all they need to do to recover your data.

 

I just went through this.
If you have ever made a backup of the system or have an external drive, now is the time to start trying to figure out what data you have available to you already and what is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL to you. If you have access to another PC, you can download an burn the "UBCD" (ultimate boot cd) and use it to diagnose and possibly recover some of that data. I would run the dell diagnostic first to determine if there is really a hardware issue first - in my case, I was losing sectors which means that every time I accessed the drive, I was potentially killing more data.
Here's the sad part. After spending hours and hours trying to make images, downloading and trying tons of programs, I never did get my desktop files back (ALL my homework and papers and what not). I ran out and picked up a new hard drive before calling Dell to set up a replacement (because time was of the essence for me). BUT, reinstalling Vista was easy, and the recovery disk enabled me, in about an hour, to get all the major drivers back on the machine. So basically, I am now running leaner and meaner than before. I also finally have a back up drive over 100 Gbytes, and you better believe that I will be maintaining copies of mission critical data. You really should do it every time before you shutdown, as with computers, there seems to always be that last successful boot and that is it!

There is anther BootCD called "hirens boot cd" which I recommend. It has a program you can run called getdataback that should help you scan the damaged disk and recover data.
There is an awesome little program called "bootIT" that can try to repair your boot sector also, if that should be the reason that your drive seems smoked. So, things to do:

1.) Determine what data is irreplaceable and center your efforts on it. Check your stash to see if you have already copied any of that stuff.
2.) Run the dell diagnostic and right down an error message if you receive one. If you dont -
3.) You may have a corrupt MBR (Download bootit and fix it). BUT FIRST
4.) It would be worth waiting, if you have time, for a chance to plug the drive in to an external drive and copy the data over.
5.) There is actually an inexpensive adapter that you can buy that I am going to pick up at some point. Basically, it has sata / ide interface and power adapters that plug in to a USB adapter. Super handy and inexpensive, does the same thing as an external case for the drive would for you.
6.) Be very patient if you can, and take your time exploring the issue. Too much screwing around can cause more harm and give you an even bigger headache. Case in point: I corrupted my friends external drive which had precious photos and videos and family stuff that was on NO OTHER COMPUTER!! So not only did I have to salvage my data, but then I had to save THAT drive without them finding out. That was not cool. If you are borrowing a drive, back it up to a local machine first just in case.

GOOD LUCK! I will try to help more if I can.

 

Wanted to chime in on another potential option.

You can download puppy linux 4.10 and use it as a temporary OS and try to mount your drive, and move data around. Puppy loads itself straight to RAM so you don't need a hard drive to use it. It also makes mounting drives and stuff super easy. I used it to delete a file that windows just wouldn't touch. Worth a shot maybe.