Damaged laptop hard drive - what to do?

BoiledBreadTomatoSauce

Hi all

My laptop fell off the table last night and will no longer boot up. Followed a few online guides and it appears sadly that the HDD hardware has been damaged, which fits with where it landed.

I've ordered a HDD enclosure to test it on another PC and see if maybe it was a connection or something that damaged, but not holding out much hope. Data recovery companies seem to be quoting up to £500 to get the data and most of them look a little dodgy / unscrupulous to say the least.

Any advice on a way to get my data back without spending a fortune? Most of it was backed up but there are a few photos, bits and bobs that weren't.

CardinalWolsey

Can you boot your laptop in to a linux distro? You should be able to do this off a USB stick (and if you have no ability to create the USB stick because your laptop is dead, you can usually order a "Live CD" (on a USB) from across the web.

In my experience, there are far better recovery tools in the *nix world than there are in Windows. In the past I've been able to recover files from a failed harddrive using this method, whilst Windows flat out refused to recognise that a device had even been plugged in.

JJ_Egan

Can you hear the drive spinning or clicking ??

BoiledBreadTomatoSauce

Thanks for the Linux idea - had a look at Linux recovery tools and there seems to be plenty of options, though whether or not they're within my technical capability is another matter!

When I try to boot up it seems to whirr away as normal - I've had one die on me before and distinctly remember the clicks and judders. In the 2 hours or so I was trying to reboot it I thought I heard a couple of "beep" noises which I know are also an indicator of doom, but I can't be sure where they came from.

grumpycrab

BoiledBreadTomatoSauce wrote: »

...In the 2 hours or so I was trying to reboot it

Anything on the screen at all? Hard disk activity light? Rather than possibly making things worse, get the disk out and try somewhere else as already mentioned. If you have a computer friend with a desktop you may have more luck connecting directly to motherboard with SATA cable rather than using a HDD enclosure (USB).

BoiledBreadTomatoSauce

It goes to the Lenovo opening screen, hangs for a bit, goes into automatic repair, and then tells me automatic repair has failed. From there I can troubleshoot, but System Image and System restore don't work. I tried going into command prompt to attempt a few fixes I saw online (chkdsk and the like). It appears my computer can't recognise an instance of Windows, so can't boot up.

It looks like recovery is around £500 which is a bit of a shocker. About 10 years back the same thing happened with a HDD that clicked, whirred and fizzed away and I got everything back for £90.

I have another laptop I could use - would a SATA cable connected to the faulty HDD be worth a go?

DoaM

Is it possible that the cable to the HDD has simply become dislodged so it's not making a proper connection? (Unlikely, given that the HDD is [usually] physically secured and it plugs in to a fixed connector, but still worth a look).

Have you tried opening up the laptop to check all cables/plugs are properly connected?

grumpycrab

BoiledBreadTomatoSauce wrote: »

It looks like recovery is around £500 which is a bit of a shocker. About 10 years back the same thing happened with a HDD that clicked, whirred and fizzed away and I got everything back for £90.

£90 - Bargain - where was that? If you do ultimately need recovery I recommend this place. But probably not cheap...
https://www.cheadledatarecovery.co.uk/

BoiledBreadTomatoSauce wrote: »

I have another laptop I could use - would a SATA cable connected to the faulty HDD be worth a go?

No, you need access to a desktop.

grumpycrab

BoiledBreadTomatoSauce wrote: »

I tried going into command prompt to attempt a few fixes I saw online (chkdsk and the like).

Could you "see" the contents of your disk? with a "dir" command from command prompt?

BoiledBreadTomatoSauce

grumpycrab wrote: »

Could you "see" the contents of your disk? with a "dir" command from command prompt?

I'll try this later - would you know what command exactly I should enter?

Thanks

BoiledBreadTomatoSauce

grumpycrab wrote: »

£90 - Bargain - where was that? If you do ultimately need recovery I recommend this place. But probably not cheap...
https://www.cheadledatarecovery.co.uk/

No, you need access to a desktop.

What is the SATA doing exactly? Would putting the HDD in an enclosure and connecting it elsewhere potentially help? I'm aware that this wil only be if the issue isn't with the HDD itself.