Laptop Hard Drive problem

MAC_Addy

I have a hard drive that I took out of a laptop that I suspected was bad.

I used my usb adapter to hook the hard drive to my laptop, when I plugged it in it near enough froze my computer.

I tried to access the hard drive through computer management, crashed that.

I went into safe mode to see if I could access it that way, same thing.

I'm thinking that this hard drive is 100% toast.

Any suggestions?

Tackle

I've heard putting it in the freezer can help till it heats up again. Never tried.

If you can't run the manufactures diagnostics on it, I'd say it's junk.

mattlee09

MAC_Addy wrote: »

I have a hard drive that I took out of a laptop that I suspected was bad.

I used my usb adapter to hook the hard drive to my laptop, when I plugged it in it near enough froze my computer.

I tried to access the hard drive through computer management, crashed that.

I went into safe mode to see if I could access it that way, same thing.

I'm thinking that this hard drive is 100% toast.

Any suggestions?

See if it shows up in the BIOS or not.

You might want to eliminate the adapter and find a way to get it straight if you really want to be sure.

What made you suspect it bad in the first place? Was it completely inaccessible from the 'home' laptop as well?

Akaricloud

The helpdesk at my old work used to freeze "bad" hard drives all the time. Surprisingly they were able to recover data off of them about 90% of the time.

MAC_Addy

mattlee09 wrote: »

See if it shows up in the BIOS or not.

What made you suspect it bad in the first place?

I haven't check in the BIOS yet to see if it comes up - I will do though.

I thought it was bad due to the laptop extremely under performing, lagging, slow boot up and taking a long time to load any programs.

whatthehell

There are a number of "rescure" cds that you can get (like Hiren's boot disk) that have free hard drive recovery and scanning tools. It may be worth it to daisy chain your hard drive to a box, boot into one of the rescue disks, and try some of these tools?

N2IT

MAC_Addy wrote: »

I have a hard drive that I took out of a laptop that I suspected was bad.

I used my usb adapter to hook the hard drive to my laptop, when I plugged it in it near enough froze my computer.

I tried to access the hard drive through computer management, crashed that.

I went into safe mode to see if I could access it that way, same thing.

I'm thinking that this hard drive is 100% toast.

Any suggestions?

When you say USB adaptor are you talking about a drive dock or a similiar tool?

It should just show up in my computer. I don't see how it would crash your computer if you were viewing it from another OS. Those files are not in use.

Are you trying to access the files from another hard drive on a known good working machine by slaving the drives or using a drive dock?

terryfera

I saw this very issue a lot at my old job, we had about 5-10 of the developers laptops die and it was the hard drive.

We did have luck freezing the hard drives like other have mentioned but make sure you put in some silica gel packs with it to keep moisture to a minimum. This gave us just enough time to recover some data.

There are many tools out there that are designed to help recover data such as Spinrite but keep in mind if there is some mechanical failure in the drive that the more you run it the less the chance of getting data off of it.


As far as locking up the computer when he plugs it in it is very possible since the host computer will be reading enough information off the drive when it is plugged in (remember all that information in disk management such as partition tables?). If there is an error early enough in the drive and it can't be read the computer will hang trying to initialize the drive.

SteveLord

You can also trying plugging the USB adapter into an older computer with a 1.1 port. I can confirm this has worked on 2 different occasions for me.

lsud00d

Another confirmation that freezing a "dead" drive has allowed the transfer of data post-freezer

Devilsbane

Freezing can help.

Do you have access to a linux machine? On several occasions I've seen a linux machine capable of retrieving data when a windows machine failed. If you don't have it (and can't get a helix or backtrack disc) another thing I've heard of is booting your machine with the hdd attached. I think one time that has worked though.

N2IT

Devilsbane wrote: »

Freezing can help.

Do you have access to a linux machine? On several occasions I've seen a linux machine capable of retrieving data when a windows machine failed. If you don't have it (and can't get a helix or backtrack disc) another thing I've heard of is booting your machine with the hdd attached. I think one time that has worked though.

Using Linux to view the MS data is a solid idea. We use this as common practice.

MAC_Addy

Tripp-Lite U238-000 USB 2.0 to SATA / IDE Combo Adapter - Supports 2.5/ 3.5 / 5.25 IDE Drives, Plug & Play at TigerDirect.com here's an adapter that's similar, not the exact one.

It wouldn't crash my computer all the way, a lot of things just wouldn't work. example; couldn't access the device manager or the disk manager in the Computer management console.

I tried it on my linux box earlier, it would load the drive but it wouldn't actually let me in.

Very strange.

I'm going to try the freezing method since this has worked for me once before. It's now sitting in the freezer at work. I shall attempt to get some info off it tomorrow.

N2IT

MAC_Addy wrote: »

Tripp-Lite U238-000 USB 2.0 to SATA / IDE Combo Adapter - Supports 2.5/ 3.5 / 5.25 IDE Drives, Plug & Play at TigerDirect.com here's an adapter that's similar, not the exact one.

It wouldn't crash my computer all the way, a lot of things just wouldn't work. example; couldn't access the device manager or the disk manager in the Computer management console.


I tried it on my linux box earlier, it would load the drive but it wouldn't actually let me in.

Very strange.

I'm going to try the freezing method since this has worked for me once before. It's now sitting in the freezer at work. I shall attempt to get some info off it tomorrow.

Nothing else makes sense so it has to be a physical issue.