SATA hard drive

[mxpxdude]

This SATA drive crashed on my friend's computer and I told him I would recover the files using this software I just got. well, I plugged it into the first SATA port and booted it up. The bios recognized it and then after the windows boot screen, my screen just goes blank. Any ideas?

 

[Pyromaniac]

Blank as in black? Yeah, i had this problem. Formated and it worked fine. ^_^

 

[linnerd40]

If it crashed on your friend's computer, chances are it won't work in yours. Are you trying to boot from the crashed drive or from your drive? If you are trying to start from the crashed drive, try booting in safe mode. Or you could put it in an extrenal hard drive enclosure and try to recover the files from there (booting from a good drive you have). If that doesn't work, try recovering the files using a Linux Live CD like
Knoppix: http://www.knoppix.org/
SystemRescueCD:http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page
or
RIP:http://www.tux.org/pub/people/kent-robotti/looplinux/rip/

Try the safe mode first, you may not be able to use your software, but you can recover some files.. Just do like a google search on how to recover the files, I can't really help you much with that. If nothing works... reformat.

I hope this helps!

 

[mxpxdude]

blank as in black. problem is, i need the data from it so i can't format.

 

[mxpxdude]

i'm booting from my drive and that one is a secondary (is there some setting for SATA drive to be secondary? like jumpers etc?)

 

[linnerd40]

Well, when my secondary hard drive crashed, I couldn't boot from the first one either. Have you tried safe mode? What kind of files are you trying to restore? Are you just trying to back up the files and then reformat the disk... or what? Let me know and I'll be able to help you more.

 

[mxpxdude]

i've tried safe mode and it just hangs. the files are just whatever i can get off it. i think most of it is accounting stuff from her office. i just need to get it off there and then i can reformat the disk or whatever after that.

 

[linnerd40]

Yeah... do you have an external hard drive enclosure? If you did, you could insert the hard drive and it would act like a big USB drive. Since you wouldn't have to boot from it, you could go into it, copy out the files you need and then reformat it... BUT, I am supposing that you don't have an enclosure... so if you are up to it, try the Linux LiveCDs. With the bad hard drive in, boot from the cd, and go to the file manager... look for the hard drive (usually something like "sda" or "sd1"), and copy the files you need to a usb flash drive. Yeah, but other than that I can't really offer much help any more... hmmm... I'll think some more about it! If I come up with something, I'll post it... Untill then... Hang in there!

 

[aaron12345]

There's also a little known, but VERY usefull windows live cd (er you make it from your windows cd so there's no sticky copyright issues) take a look at BartPE.

Anyways back to the topic - check the boot device in the bios. Is the drive making noises or is the data just gone. If you hear clicking noises etc or something is physically wrong with the drive it can hang the boot of the system and your software won't work. ESPECIALLY if it is clicking, that's the drive DESTROYING itself. If you really need the data and there is physical damage everytime you boot you make it worse, get the drive to a professional data recovery place ASAP.

 

[linnerd40]

There's also a little known, but VERY usefull windows live cd (er you make it from your windows cd so there's no sticky copyright issues) take a look at BartPE.

Anyways back to the topic - check the boot device in the bios. Is the drive making noises or is the data just gone. If you hear clicking noises etc or something is physically wrong with the drive it can hang the boot of the system and your software won't work. ESPECIALLY if it is clicking, that's the drive DESTROYING itself. If you really need the data and there is physical damage everytime you boot you make it worse, get the drive to a professional data recovery place ASAP.

Very Good Point, listen to this man.