Hard Drive failure?

[Sure-Oz]

So i got home late last night from work and my cpu showed the "blue screen of death". Ive seen it happen a few tiems before but not recently and restarted just fine. So i restarted and now it just sits at the windows xp loading screen where the bar keeps trying to load. I have tried to repair it using a windows recovery cd and even did a fixboot copy as well and nothing. The farthest i get is that it goes to the windows xp loading screen and then goes to a chkdsk screen and gets stuck at 27% saying the hard drive is dirty. I had it sit several hours and it didnt get past 27%...

So has the hard drive failed and if so, is there any way to recover my files?

It's a dell 8400 pc. 3.2ghz pentium 4 machine, had it since 2004 i think. It wont boot up in safe mode either, and loads all the drivers on the black screen and stays there.

Any help would be appreciated...

[htismaqe]

Yes, there are ways to recover your data. It's just very expensive.

[Sure-Oz]

Yes, there are ways to recover your data. It's just very expensive.

That's what im afraid of...i have school stuff on there as well as music and family photos, which kinda sucks...

Couldn't i get a new hard drive and make it like a 2nd one and see if i can get files out of it that way?

[Fish]

I would recommend M$ DaRT 5. Microsoft Diagnostic and Recovery Toolset.

http://www.torrentreactor.net/torrents/1918506/Microsoft-DaRT-v5-0-amp%3B-v6-0

The torrent in the link has an installer for v5.0(Win2000, XP) and v6.0(Vista, x86 and x64).

The installer will make an .iso that you burn to CD. You startup using the CD you created and it will boot to a Windows-like GUI. If your problems are not hardware related, it may actually fix your Windows install. At the least, it will give you a file explorer to manage/backup your files. You can use a flash drive, or a second hard drive if you have it, to get your data off the drive.

Let me know if you have any questions about it.

[htismaqe]

I would recommend buying a new hard drive and installing Windows from scratch on it before you do ANYTHING else.

From there, you can mount the old drive and try to recover data from there.

[Sure-Oz]

I would recommend M$ DaRT 5. Microsoft Diagnostic and Recovery Toolset.

http://www.torrentreactor.net/torrents/1918506/Microsoft-DaRT-v5-0-amp%3B-v6-0

The torrent in the link has an installer for v5.0(Win2000, XP) and v6.0(Vista, x86 and x64).

The installer will make an .iso that you burn to CD. You startup using the CD you created and it will boot to a Windows-like GUI. If your problems are not hardware related, it may actually fix your Windows install. At the least, it will give you a file explorer to manage/backup your files. You can use a flash drive, or a second hard drive if you have it, to get your data off the drive.

Let me know if you have any questions about it.


Thanks, i have a laptop that i can download this from and i'll give it a shot. I'll def. post here or shoot you a pm if i have questions. I'll try anything before i have to get a new hard drive.

Also htisimage thanks for the advice there, sounds easy enough if i have to do it.

[htismaqe]

Thanks, i have a laptop that i can download this from and i'll give it a shot. I'll def. post here or shoot you a pm if i have questions. I'll try anything before i have to get a new hard drive.

Also htisimage thanks for the advice there, sounds easy enough if i have to do it.

If you have a laptop, you could get a USB drive bay and just connect your old drive to the laptop. Do you know if the old drive is IDE or SATA?

[htismaqe]

Oh and make sure your laptop supports USB 2.0.

I went through a reformat recently where I had to transfer files from an older machine to avoid data loss and it took 35 hours to transfer 21GB over USB 1.1. :)

[Sure-Oz]

If you have a laptop, you could get a USB drive bay and just connect your old drive to the laptop. Do you know if the old drive is IDE or SATA?

I will check but i beleive it's a SATA....

[Sure-Oz]

Oh and make sure your laptop supports USB 2.0.

I went through a reformat recently where I had to transfer files from an older machine to avoid data loss and it took 35 hours to transfer 21GB over USB 1.1. :)

35 hours, how fun....:doh!: I hope its a newer one then

[htismaqe]

35 hours, how fun....:doh!: I hope its a newer one then

I had the data on a separate partition than Windows and I've reinstalled Windows many, many times under those circumstances. I did my partitions and installed Windows only to realize that the master boot record was hosed (Windows had Windows on C: and the data on D:, but the Windows install CD app had Windows on D: and Data on C:). It's never happened before, but I knew I better wipe the MBR and start over. Unfortunately, I hadn't installed SP2 yet, so USB 1.1 was my only option.

[htismaqe]

External USB-SATA enclosures are cheap, about $20.

[Fish]

I will check but i beleive it's a SATA....

The documentation for a Dell 8400 has an 80GB SATA listed.

[Sure-Oz]

Update-

Hard drive didn't fail, it just got a really nasty virus or something that caused XP to not startup. I had a friend that works for a tech dept use their tools to get by it since i had issues at home. He saved the whole drive and the files and had to basically re-install some missing xp files etc, and cleaned the registry good. I just had to re-install my dvd drive software,quicktime, things like that and update xp etc. I paid him $50 even though he said he'd do it for free. He even put an extra hard drive as a backup on the system for me that is 20gigs that they had laying around and didn't need. So my whole OS and files are on that drive as well, love it!

I am really happy that everything got saved and already have started to back up everything. He put cc cleaner and office 2007 on my cpu as well, which i didnt have before haha, awesome!

Gotta love good friends!

Appreciate all your guys help!