Harddisk crashed/damaged

[anderslr]

My Fujitsu HD crashed yesterday (I dropped my Dell laptop on the floor) :( . No doubt that the disk surface has been scratched. I cannot boot and it makes the famous click sound. I have removed the disk from my Dell laptop and tried to connect it to another PC via the USB port. However Windows cannot recognize the disk. Any ideas how I can connect to the damaged disk? Anybody who knows a piece of Software that can help me save some data from the disk? Thanks in advance - really hope that you can help me.... :)

[classicsoftware]

How large of a drop? The disk should be able to withstand it. Can the bios see the drive? Does it show up in disk manager? This will guide our ability to help you. If the OS or the bios cannot see the drive, you will need to have your data professionally recovered and that can be expensive.

[anderslr]

Thanks. The Bios can see the Harddisk - but Windows Explorer (Vista) cannot. I have run the Bios test program which comes out with quite a detailed report giving a lot of information/error messages. I have passed these error codes to Dell support who confirms that the Hardisk is partly damaged. The Bios test didn't find the first error/bad sector before 60% of the disk was read. From that I suppose it will be possible to recover some of the data.

[classicsoftware]

Download a copy of GetDataBack (http://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-faq.htm)and give it a try. With the trial version you can save only one file at a time. If it works, buy the license. You will have to remember if the file system was FAT32 or NTFS.

[anderslr]

I tried GetDataBack as one of the first thing after the crash - unfotunately with no luck. I think the problem is that Windows doesn't recognize the Harddisk. I can se in GetDataBack that there is a possibility to connect remotely through a serial port COM3. But not via USB. As said earlier it should be possible some way or another to get access to the disk as the Bios can do that.

[classicsoftware]

If GetDataBack does not see the drive, I don't know what will. You can try putting it back in the laptop and using a bootable Linnux CD to see if ot can mount the hard drive. You will need a drive on the USB ports to save the data to.

[Paul Komski]

One thing you could try is to connect the laptop drive internally to an IDE or SATA port (as appropriate) of a Desktop PC rather than using the USB bus at all. There are 2.5 to 3.5 adapters (http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=37602&doy=8m5&C=SO&U=strat15) for 2.5 IDE HDDs. They work best as the only drive at the END of an IDE cable and not using any jumpers makes them master as a rule; the CDROM cable can often be used temporarily for this. It is unlikely to work - but with hardware you just never know. If the drive is not then recognised in the main PC's BIOS (or by diskmanager in windows) no windows software, GDB or WinHex etc, is going to be able to access it. I cant see that using serial communications will be any better since there would have to be an ATA interface at some point.

[anderslr]

Thanks to both of you. I will buy one of these adapters today and see where that brings me. Cross my fingers..... :-)