Damaged laptop hard drive - what to do?

grumpycrab

BoiledBreadTomatoSauce wrote: »

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

A black terminal window opens up. Type "C:<enter>"to go to C: drive then "dir /w <enter>" to see contents. You are looking for "directories" named [Users] and [Windows]. If you get this far that's good!

grumpycrab

BoiledBreadTomatoSauce wrote: »

What is the SATA doing exactly? Would putting the HDD in an enclosure and connecting it elsewhere potentially help?

The hard disk has a "SATA" interface. An enclosure adds an extra interface "USB". By connecting the hard disk directly to a motherboard using a "SATA cable" you don't use USB. Makes it easier for the computer to talk to the hard disk (in laymans terms!) But nothing wrong with trying an external enclosure...

BoiledBreadTomatoSauce

grumpycrab wrote: »

A black terminal window opens up. Type "C:<enter>"to go to C: drive then "dir /w <enter>" to see contents. You are looking for "directories" named [Users] and [Windows]. If you get this far that's good!

Ah..I think anything I did that involved typing C: yielded a message along the lines of "cannot open volume" last night, but I'll try again to be sure!

psychic_teabag

grumpycrab wrote: »

The hard disk has a "SATA" interface. An enclosure adds an extra interface "USB". By connecting the hard disk directly to a motherboard using a "SATA cable" you don't use USB. Makes it easier for the computer to talk to the hard disk (in laymans terms!) But nothing wrong with trying an external enclosure...

I was under the impression that many (most ?) usb interfaces provide ATA command passthrough, so you can send ATA commands through the USB interface. This allows things like SMART to work with devices in USB enclosures. eg

https://www.smartmontools.org/wiki/USB

linux man page for hdparm says

Many newer (2008 and later) USB drive enclosures
now also support "SAT" (SCSI-ATA Command Translation) and therefore may
also work with hdparm. E.g. recent WD "Passport" models and recent
NexStar-3 enclosures. Some options may work correctly only with the
latest kernels.

BoiledBreadTomatoSauce

Update on this...

Firstly, I found most of the data I lost on an external HDD so it's no longer a huge issue. I still hooked the dodgy drive up to an enclosure though and stuck it in another laptop.

It's definitely physically damaged as it was making the occasional weird noise, but eventually the other laptop recognised it. I couldn't get into my old desktop however as it said I didn't have permissions.

Any ideas? I tried my old Windows username and password as per a couple of guides I saw online, but no luck.

wongataa

You probably have to use the take ownership function to access the files.

googler

BoiledBreadTomatoSauce wrote: »

... eventually the other laptop recognised it. I couldn't get into my old desktop however as it said I didn't have permissions.

... because you have it linked as a secondary drive, and you're not booting from it?

You should still be able to access data with File Explorer from the laptop's desktop or start menu

BoiledBreadTomatoSauce

Ownership function of the laptop it's being opened on, or ownership function of the old hard drive?

Apologies if I sound computer illiterate!

In file explorer I can get into windows, then users, but as soon as I click on my old username (which would take me to my files) I get the permissions issue. I logged in with the password for the old laptop but it didn't work.

psychic_teabag

As far as the laptop you are using is concerned, the attached disk is just a data disk. So any users and passwords associated with the windows installation on the old drive are irrelevant. Only user ids enabled on the running system matter. It won't recognise the old username/password you used to use. I'm not sure how ntfs represents file ownership, but it's presumably by a user id. Creating an account with the same name/password won't necessarily use the same id, and therefore give you access to the files. (If they use ACLs, you might be able to give the account the same ACL, but that's boyond my knowledge.)

Taking ownership, as above, is one option, but I would avoid writing to the dodgy disk unless absolutely necessary.

Another option would be to use linux. My recollection is that, under windows, even the admin is not allowed to bypass file permissions, other than by taking ownership first. But as root on linux there would be no such restrictions - you should be able to read anything you want.

AndyPix

psychic_teabag wrote: »

Another option would be to use linux. My recollection is that, under windows, even the admin is not allowed to bypass file permissions, other than by taking ownership first. But as root on linux there would be no such restrictions - you should be able to read anything you want.

+1 for this .
You could take ownership using the security tab and "advanced" , but as said - you don't really want to be writing to the disk and that would be a lot of write operations as you would need to allow inheritance ..


Best thig to do is use a Linux live distro and copy the data off .
Linux doesn't listen to silly old windows file permissions