Recovering data from a laptop hdd that wont boot

Donnie

indierocker85 wrote: »

Yeah OK, I will do this. Can I write to cds when booted into this? I am unfamiliar with Linux. Also where can I get one of these cds from? And whats the cost? Link me if possible

Not unless you have a second CD writer or are using Puppy Linux and a re-writeable CD/DVD. If not, hopefully you have a USB drive at hand.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_CD

fwor

Good point Donnie.

There are other options - for example some distros can be booted over a network, but perhaps that's a bit more complex than is called for here - I've certainly never tried that...

PartImage can also be booted and loaded into memory, so that you can eject the bootable CD and burn CDs and DVDs, though again I've never needed to try it.

SteveCutler

Here's what I'd do:

Go to your nearest maplins (or similar electrical store) and buy this.

Now, turn your laptop upside down (make sure it's off), and somewhere you should see a rectangular compartment, maybe with a screw in it. Here's an example of where it could be:



(where it says Hard disk).

Open up this compartment (may be a screw or simply a slide compartment) and you'll see your hard drive sitting there.

You'll need to detatch it from the laptop - so unplug the cable it's connected to.

Once detached, you can use the kit you purchased earlier. Don't bother with the metal plate, that's only for permanent use.

Your hard drive *may* have a kind of adapter on the port. You'll be able to tell whether it does or not by seeing whether each end of the kit you bought earlier fits onto the hard drive. If neither end does, it has an adapter and you'll need to just pull it off. Then you should be able to fit one end of the kit onto the hard drive.

What this does is "converts" your laptop hard drive to a "desktop"-type hard drive.

So now we can put it inside your desktop and run it as a second hard drive.

To do this, open up your desktop (several screws on the back), and unplug the two cables which are connected to your CD/DVD drive. These two cables should be a "ribbon"-like cable and a white-ended four-pin-like cable.

Now, plug the "ribbon" cable into your newly adapted hard drive. The white-ended cable can be left.

That's all! Now reput your PC together (to the extent of your choice - you'll need to be taking it apart again to get the hard drive back out!)

Once done, make sure the monitor and keyboard and mouse etc are connected, and turn your PC on. You should find your PC detects the secondary hard drive, and if you're lucky it may detect there's a problem with it and fix it without removing your files! If it does so, you can reverse the steps in my post to get back to normal and have a working laptop again - with all your files. If it doesn't, simply use your desktop as normal and locate the second hard drive via My Computer - transferring the files you wish.

Hope this helps.

EDIT: I should say that I'm no computer expert, so before you attempt this I'd wait to see if any techie experts can confirm that my instructions are at least safe! I've done the above before, and it worked in my case, but I'm aware everyone's cases may be different. So if you're a techie expert, please reply with any areas which I've instructed incorrectly.

indierocker85

Hi guys, right I downlaoded ubuntu linux live cd, and now i have booted it into the kernel, I am very unfamiliar with linux and thus could somebody direct me on how to find the windows files etc so i can back up the data and documents. Thank you so much

Donnie

Haven't used that system myself, so can't see what you can see.

https://help.ubuntu.com/8.04/hardware/C/disks.html

http://library.gnome.org/users/user-guide/stable/gosnautilus-460.html