Adrian Drummond-Hill wrote:

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Joe Wynn wrote:

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Hard drive is corrupt, can't get any information off it. If it was taken to a specialist to fix then the guy reckons its all recoverable, but that's looking at £400 minimum, so what i'm doing is keeping the hard drive until I can find the funds to get it properly looked at. So pretty much lost. For now.

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Joe, I have a gizmo that attaches to hard drives when they have been removed from computers. It has a power supply for desktop PC's but notebooks don't need it. It connects to the USB port of a good computer and if there's anything on the drive, it will copy that to the good computer. If you want to borrow it let me know.

Adrian

PM with contact phone number sent.

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Thanks for the offer Adrian, might keep the hard drive without doing anything to it at present. Got to weigh up options of what to do with it!

Sorry to hear that Joe, how about as Martyn says running Ubuntu from a disc, youve got nothing to lose to have a try, maybe Linux based programs might beable to read the drive, its got to be worth a try, cheaper than plan b which could cost 400 quid, i would definatly have a try before spending silly money, i dont have a 2.5 inch caddy, only 3.5 caddies but if i did i would like to try the drive as a portable device via usb and see if you can read it, i would say these two options need to be explored first before going down the expensive route, most laptops use 2.5 inch drives, you would need to check yours first, then if you look on scans website at 2.5 inch caddies you can get one for around a fiver, if it doesent work youve lost a fiver but if it does spin up then you can see what is readable and back up, this would be my first stop then i would try Ubuntu, good luck pal

Hard drive is corrupt, can't get any information off it. If it was taken to a specialist to fix then the guy reckons its all recoverable, but that's looking at £400 minimum, so what i'm doing is keeping the hard drive until I can find the funds to get it properly looked at. So pretty much lost. For now.

Joe Wynn wrote:

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Very kind of you to offer Martyn, know its your area of expertise! Computer's out at menders, they think they can possibly get some data of it even if the hard drive's corrupt. If all's not well then i'll upgrade my flickr and get them off there, not what I would want to do but a good consolation prize.

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You should be able to copy your own pictures back to your computer from flickr without upgrading ,I would have thought.

Hi Joe

Sorry to hear about your laptop problems, but don't give up hope yet. As others have said, it may still be possible to read the photo files even if it doesn't boot properly from your hard disc. The important thing is not to write anything else to the disc whilst it's not working and that includes reinstalling windows. It is possible to reinstall windows without affecting your data files, but I wouldn't advise it without a backup.

If you're interested what I would do is to try booting the disc from a Ubuntu (linux) 'live' disc because it's free and it doesn't install anything (i.e. write to your hard disc). It can read Windows (NTFS) partitions where your photos will be and from here they could be copied to a USB device such as an external hard disc, CD/DVD or even a large pen drive / memory stick. You can do this yourself if you have access to the internet on another computer with a CD burner. Just search for Ubuntu 'live' disc, download it and burn it to CD/DVD as directed in the instructions from where you download it such as here. Then, make sure your laptop's bios is set to boot from CD/DVD first, put the disc in and reboot from the disc. If you're computer is working OK (i.e. only the hard drive is faulty), you'll have a live installation of Ubuntu Linux which nowadays works in a very similar way to Windows. Don't install it! just run it as a 'Live' installation (maybe called trial or test mode). The desktop should show your windows disc on the left which you can inspect for your files. Of course if the drive is completely kaput, it won't show up there. Here's the Ubuntu Website

If that didn't work, I would also try removing the hard disc and putting it in an external USB drive case / caddy. You'd need access to another working computer of course to read the files in this way.

If you have no joy at the repair shop, of if you'd prefer it, get in touch with me by PM and I'll see if I can do anything.

Hope this helps, Martyn

P.S. Don't forget you've got some of your best photos on Flickr and your blog and these can always be re-downloaded - in fact if you're a pro user of Flickr, it's not a bad way of having a back up.

Well what happens when I turn on the computer i get through the bios menus fine, but from there can't do anything. I tried to boot up the computer from a startup disc I burned from another computer, but this didn't really work (though don't think it wiped the drive). The fact the computer refuses to boot from the hard drive worried me, so i'm hoping that the OS s corrupted and nothing else is wrong, though I fear that the internal workings are a bit broken. The way it happened was that I turned on computer as normal and it basically crashed as I tried to open windows explorer, so I turned off the computer at the power button and then when I turned it on again then the OS wouldn't load. Will take it to the menders in alty tomorrow (who seem to be fantastic, got my photos off a hard drive that'd been out in a thunderstorm!), but would be grateful for any advice.
Cheers,
Joe

Bl**dy hell Joe, Thats sounds bad, hope you manage to get them off there some how, just because windows is corrupted and may have crashed you still might beable to salvage your work, has the hard drive failed or is it just windows is corrupted? if windows is dead then you can take out the hard drive and place it in a caddy and then use as a portable to connect to another computer to save your files, windows will read a NTFS windows drive as a plugin and you can save your files to another system, hope this helps,

you may find unfortunately if you tried booting with a disc its too late as these wipe as they write.What you are saying is the same has happened to me ,unfortunately it sound like the hard drive has failed,hope im wrong ,but ive had it the same on 3 different laptops over the last 4 years and what your discribing is the same a failed hard drive .if the drives broke it will not let you get any further than the first section with bios etc :(

-- Edited by JOHN TYMON on Monday 27th of August 2012 09:56:23 PM

yep, painfull, cant say anymore, sickening that

Dennis atherton wrote:

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13 months old is pretty grim, unlucky number 13 for sure


as per backing up i always do backs ups on mirrored drives, one back up is not safe enough to risk it for me, every portable hard drive i use is a mirror of a second, then when one fails you can get a perfect copy of all from the other then your back to two, the chances of two failing at the same time is astronomical, double backs ups is the safe way forward in this digital age,

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I backup to 2 drives,just not done it for a month,just found a way to get some of my shots back off flickr,so all is not lost :)

Very sound advice there John. Cheers.