Need to save hard drive files from laptop where drive might be damaged

Something recently happened to my laptop, and now whenever I boot up my laptop, I get a message stating that "No drive detected", and I don't know if the hard drive might be damaged or not.

I tried connecting the hard drive directly to a desktop pc since it's a sata hard drive, but my desktop pc just froze on the boot screen whenever this hard drive was connected.

I also was going to try and use a hard drive external case to maybe connect it to the pc this way, but I wasn't sure if it would work.

Is there anyway to save my files, or to even know if the hard drive is indeed damaged? I don't hear any noises or anything when there's power, and the light in the hard drive does turn on, so does anyone know what would be best for me to do?

 

I would guess the best would be to whack it in a USB 2.5" external caddy and see if you can access it through there. If you can't access it then you are probably looking at very expensive data recovery services.

 

hmmm... by chance, aren't you running xp?

in such case, can you get to BIOS?

and in such case, can you switch off the AHCI mode there? the OS should recognize the HDD then, if this is the reason.

 

Sounds like the hard drive is dead. Lesson to be learned - BACK UP YOUR DATA BEFORE SOMETHING BAD HAPPENS

 

Try the old "hard drive in freezer" trick and see if you can recover your data.

 

Lol what's that, and how would that work?

And yes I can get to the BIOS, and I am running on windows xp. What is this AHCI mode? How would I be able to do this. I searched a bit online, but wasn't able to find much on how to disable it, but I did read that disabling AHCI after windows xp has already been installed may cause a boot failure. How would I be able to do this?

I checked out Geek Squad at best buy, and they said couple hundred dollars. That's a rip off if you ask me. It probably takes them a second to get whatever they need of the hard drive.

I don't know if it's permanently damaged or not because I had gotten this error for the first time, and then did a diagnostic and luckily the hard drive worked again, but after shutting down again, it has since not been able to start.

 

This method will only work if the hard drive failure is due to the acuator system in the hard drive and should be your last resort if you can't find any other way to fix your hard drive. If your hard drive is failing due to other issues (ie circuit board, spindle, platter, etc), this method won't work.

Take your hard drive out. Place it in a zip-lock bag. Freeze for half a day. Quickly and carefully put the drive back in your laptop. It's not a permanent fix, so you'll have to extract all your important files before the HDD fails again.

http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/helpdesk/?p=197

 

If the hard drive is not making a clicking sound the freezer trick will not work and there is really nothing beyond doing a platter swap that you can do.

 

send it to drivesavers before you do anything if you have irreplaceable data. seriously! i lost all my digital pictures because i tried all the "methods" before i tried a pro service. it is expensive to say the least but it has to be recovered in a clean room if you actually need your data

 

If you have a ton of money to blow...

 

well, it completely depends how important the data you need to recover is. i would have spent whatever it took to recover my pictures....

 

well, a simple $60 hard drive external case did the job. I was able to just pop my hard drive in that and connect it to my computer via USB, and my files loaded up this way.

It's kind of strange that this would be the case because why would my laptop not be able to detect my hard drive. Is it possible that another component in my laptop is malfunctioning?

 

yeah, not everyone is that lucky

 

60 dollar case! yikes they go for 10-15

 

lol im abit too late but i was just going to tell you the same problem i had with my laptop:

Same problem, wont boot up, then went out and bought a 2.5" external enclosuer thingy for like $20, then plugged it in my other computer's USB, and bam there was everything, copied it all to my external, put the hard drive back in my laptop, re-installed XP, put all my files back in and BAM, as good as new, now i have a back up of everything too..

Yeah $60 is abit more for a enclosuer.. Anyhow, you got your files, which is probably worth more than $60..

 

lol i did return the enclosure to best buy once I was done

 

Your MBR might have been corrupt or missing. That is likely why you got your data without much fuss. When my drive failed it corrupted everything that it touched practically. Puppy Linux is an OS that can Load straight to RAM and function. Next time I would load that and see if it could mount your drive. If so, you can use an external or secondary source to try to transfer your data. That ultimately is what saved my bacon. I tried like, 15 different data recovery programs and they all sucked.