Hard Drive Problems - help needed please!

annie-c

albertross wrote:

B33fy means inside the tower, on the same ribbon cable as your other hard disk..

How many hard disks have I got? Oh dear!!

intel

@annie-c

Just put all of the posts in one post as it gets confusing so please stop panic posting.. :beer:

albertross_2

When you startup your PC, it should say hit F1, del, Esc, F2 F11 F12 or something similar to enter the bios. If you do this as soon as the PC boots, then it should go into some configuration screen. Somewhere in there, there should be some references to any hard disks or CD drives that you have installed. If you plug the bust hard disk in as a slave (middle of ribbon cable, put in a spare power connector), the start it up. If The PC can see the bust hard disk in these bios screens, there is hope about getting your data back.. I'm confused about these disk from ebay, what are they, what have you done with them sofar?

annie-c

I can't find the exact one, but is similar to this:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/PC-Repair-Virus-Scan-Recover-Data-BOOT-CD_W0QQitemZ5866829304QQcategoryZ191QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

albertross_2

You could have got that for free from the internet..

annie-c

Well, yes, if I knew where to look!!!

But, anyway, what shall I do next?!!!

albertross_2

Is the current situation that you have one and only one bust hard disk that won't boot, and a linux diagnostic CD you bought from Ebay?

If so, put the hard disk back in the machine, check in the bios to see if it recognised, then put the CD in (have you checked that it is what is says it is), and startup the PC.

It should boot from the CD, if it doesn't you will need to go into the bios and change the boot order , moving the CD to the top, and try again. When booted, come back and tell us what the options on the menu are..

If you have two working disks, or a usb enclosure, then my advice would be different..

albertross_2

annie-c wrote:

Well, yes, if I knew where to look!!!

But, anyway, what shall I do next?!!!

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

annie-c

albertross wrote:

Is the current situation that you have one and only one bust hard disk that won't boot, and a linux diagnostic CD you bought from Ebay?

If so, put the hard disk back in the machine, check in the bios to see if it recognised, then put the CD in (have you checked that it is what is says it is), and startup the PC.

It should boot from the CD, if it doesn't you will need to go into the bios and change the boot order , moving the CD to the top, and try again. When booted, come back and tell us what the options on the menu are..

If you have two working disks, or a usb enclosure, then my advice would be different..

Er, yes, I think that is about right. I have this working laptop, and then downstairs a dead (or half dead, unbootable) PC tower thingy. The hard disk is still in the machine, I didn't get as far as taking it out - you all frightened me with stories about what might go wrong in the fridge!
I'll go now and see what I can do...

Wish me luck!

annie-c

Sorry for the delayed response on this. It's all a bit scary for me - I was quite excited taking the back off the tower - I don't know what I expected to find in there but it all looked surprisingly empty!

But anyway, I've taken the back/side off the tower and had a look inside. There don't seem to be any loose cables. I don't really fancy doing the fridge thing just yet, so I've had a play around with the CD but still it gets so far with rebooting but then the screen goes blank at the end. Just before it goes blank a box comes up saying something about a memory problem, but it happens so quickly I don't know what exactly it says. But if it's a memory thing then I guess that rules out the fridge idea?

Someone earlier said to run scandisk - can anyone help with how I do that, without booting the machine up?

Thanks

Annie