Data Recovery?

[Bartleby]

The other day, I dropped my laptop and the now the HD won't boot. At first I was just bothered that I couldn't finish my my current civ game (I was going to buy a new computer soon anyway), but as time goes on I rememebr more and more stuff on that I would really like to be able to recover. Any hints?

 

[wit>trope]

I know you can pay someone to do it but that costs a lot of money like hundreds of dollars or something. There might be a cheaper, easier way. It might be that something other than the HD was damaged. In that case I guess you could remove the HD and put it into another working computer to recover the data.

 

[Padma]

Will the system boot from a Live-CD? (A bootable CD with an OS of any kind on it.) If so, I would recommend booting up a rescue CD, such as Knoppix, and seeing if you can retrieve the data from your hard disk with that.

 

[Bartleby]

Thanks. I booted from a floppy, and I tried to use FDISK to check the partition (I don't know if that's wise or not) but I get "no fixed disk present" or such like. The machine was running when I dropped it and the HD started to "click"--all I could do was power down. I have a bad feeling that if I can get my files back, I'll have to pay through the nose...

 

[Grisu]

maybe the HD is just not plugged in correctly anymore? have you tried checking if it's firmly mounted in your notebook?

 

[Bartleby]

I did remove the drive & put it back in, it seems properly mounted. The noise it made is enough to convice me that it's banjaxed.

 

[Padma]

Yeah, if the HD is "clicking", then you may be SOL. Although, it could be the HD itself is okay, and just the HD-Controller is bollixed up. But again, you will have to pay to recover the data.

 

[wit>trope]

For your new computer get dual hard drives so you can have one hard drive just as a backup mirror of all the data on your primary hard drive. Since the backup harddrive won't be used at all except for backups, it will probably never go bad

 

[Neomega]

For your new computer get dual hard drives so you can have one hard drive just as a backup mirror of all the data on your primary hard drive. Since the backup harddrive won't be used at all except for backups, it will probably never go bad

I did this once..... and my back-up disk failed...

store important stuff online, or to cd or DVD.

 

[vbraun]

store important stuff online, or to cd or DVD.

If you use gmail you could use the Gmail Drive.

 

[Bartleby]

Thanks for the input, people. I'm going to investigate the cost anyway.
My new computer will have two hard disks...I already have a different attitude towards backing up.