Failed - Replace hard disk 1 (warranty id - code 10008)

pLuhhmm

Awesome.... Okay, from what Ive gathered this is a complete hard drive failure. Its an Acer Laptop. Does anyone know what I should do? Im going to call acer tomorrow and try and get it replaced. Are there any ways to recover any files off it? I dont think so but you never know.

royal

Depends on how bad you need it. Since you said it's hard drive failure, I'm assuming it's clicking which means probably not. Though you can use some third party services that specialize in data recovery that will charge a lot of money to recovery anything possible. Sevices such as http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.com/

aordal

Expect to pay $600+ to get a drive rebuilt. If you feel adventerous you could rebuild it yourself. You would need to buy a HD exactly like the one you have now and the tools to take apart the drive. Then take the plates out of the bad drive and the plates out of the good drive. Put the plates from the bad drive into the good one.

That's just a way to do it yourself. I don't know the exact issue with your drive so I cant guarantee that it would work but it's an option. Also, if it's in warranty taking a drive apart will VOID it.


This all assumes it's not a flash drive =D

JDMurray

You need to determine if it's the hard drive that failed or the disk controller in the laptop. The drive itself might be OK, so don't do anything until you talk with Acer.

And that error message comes up a few times in Google.

msteinhilber

There are a lot of unknowns here as people have pointed out.

If the problem is with the hard drive itself, and not the controller, then is the issue an issue of bad sectors, is it an issue where the drive is exhibiting other issues? I'm assuming that you have tried to connect the drive to a working machine and it is not detected, so not likely to be bad sectors. Depending on the nature of the failure, if you have a reason to believe it may be related to the circuit board on the hard drive, you may be able to try swapping it if you can obtain the same exact drive. I've had a few drives in my years where the drive would no longer detect and sometimes was clicking, and we were able to recover data off a few drives by swapping the circuit boards from a working drive of the exact same model.

My advice, since you have been talking about doing your own work for other people, if this is for a customer of yours I would not get into any form of data recovery other than possibly just connecting the drive to see if you can get it to detect at all to possibly run further recovery software on it. If the customer wants to turn to a pro to do the work, the more you mess with the drive the less chance of them getting data off the drive. And if you get into trying any physical repair of any sorts on the drive and do it incorrect, you may ruin any chance of a pro being able to recover data.

If it's for a customer, and they really value their data and would consider investing a good chunk of money to get it back, look into various companies that perform recovery and become an affiliate of them. I once referred a customer to DriveSavers, they saved 10% I believe and I received a hefty commission on the total cost of recovery. Being that this particular customer had no backup and just recently completed a 6 month long analysis for another company, they paid for the express service and I was about $500 wealthier for just establishing a line of communication between my customer and DriveSavers.

rubberToe

If the BIOS does not recognize the drive then the logic board went. You can look around on Ebay for the a drive and swap the boards. For this to work it needs to be the same firmware so check the manufacture date and message anyone selling same model for the manufacture date and try to get one manufactured within two weeks of the date on your drive for the best luck. If your patient one may become available over time.

If the drive is failing but is recognized, then use GNU ddrescue [not dd_rescue] off any live cd and copy contents to a healthy drive. Use Testdisk to repair any problems with partition tables / MBR. Use chkdsk. There are a couple freeware recovery tools that might work if the FS is hosed.

http://www.myharddrivedied.com/presentations_software.html

Presentation on recovery:
http://www.myharddrivedied.com/presentations-Defcon14.html


As already mentioned, don't attempt recovery for a client.

tiersten

aordal wrote:

Expect to pay $600+ to get a drive rebuilt. If you feel adventerous you could rebuild it yourself. You would need to buy a HD exactly like the one you have now and the tools to take apart the drive. Then take the plates out of the bad drive and the plates out of the good drive. Put the plates from the bad drive into the good one.

I'd be surprised if the drive will even survive you swapping the platters. I've seen and heard of people swapping damaged controller boards themselves with some success but never actual platters.

rubberToe

I'd be surprised if the drive will even survive you swapping the platters.

You cannot swap the platters unless using a specialized tool. The information is located by the firmware after reading the servo info that is low level formatted. All the platters have to remain in the exact alignment and you will NEVER be able to read data off if the alignment is messed up.

pLuhhmm

Yeah this my dads laptop, we got it when we got mine for college its less then a year old. Does anyone else know if taking apart the laptop void the warranty at all for acer?? Its 5am and I cant remeber lol.. I know on Xboxs it does.

JDMurray

pLuhhmm wrote:

Yeah this my dads laptop, we got it when we got mine for college its less then a year old. Does anyone else know if taking apart the laptop void the warranty at all for acer?? Its 5am and I cant remeber lol.. I know on Xboxs it does.

If any sort of device is still under warranty then assume that disassembly will immediately void the warranty. Take no action until you talk with the support people where you bought it or at Acer itself.