rather than continue to piggyback on the other theread, let me start a new one for this.

My dell laptop's harddrive crashed (which I'm starting to find out is quite common with Dell :evil: )...now although I had tons of music on it, it's the photos that I had on there (and stupidly never backed up) that I'm truly sore about losing.

So with that said, does anyone know if there is any way in hell to salvage at least the photos off the drive? Does anyone know someone who's damn good at doing this to recommend?

Re: hard drive help!

crashed as in it won't spin up? or crashed as in it's still working OK, but Windows crashed and won't boot up...

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won't boot up

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[quote]So with that said, does anyone know if there is any way in hell to salvage at least the photos off the drive? Does anyone know someone who's damn good at doing this to recommend?[/quote]there are data recovery companies, they pretty take apart drives and try to retain as much info as possible, cost is in $1000's. You can also take out the drive and ziplock it and freeze it. Now I have no idea if this works, I just heard it in theory. Do at your own risk.

Otherwords you are SOL. Like a fire to house, generally that data is lost.

Re: hard drive help!

Well, if it's just Windows that crashed and the BIOS, etc. recognizes it, see if you can re-install Windows (not through the Dell disk as that formats the drive, and not through an OEM copy, as that also needs to have a format done...it'll severely lessen the chances of recovering the files needed). Install over the folder it was on.

Or, hook it up elsewhere as a slave drive and see if it can be accessed as is...otherwise, scans by software will be needed to access those files.

And it's not common for Dell drives to crash...it's common to whatever brand Dell is using for their hard drives to crash. Which reminds me; if you recover the stuff, look on the hard drive and check the make/warranty...if it's within, you can RMA it out and get a replacement.

Re: hard drive help!

[QUOTE=FM;422224]

Or, hook it up elsewhere as a slave drive and see if it can be accessed as is...otherwise, scans by software will be needed to access those files.[/QUOTE]

I'd try that first. You can get external casings for notebook hdd with USB connections that will connect to your PC. See if you can access your photos using the hdd as a slave.

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thanks I'll give it a try and it was still under warranty so it is being replaced...it's just the irreplacable photos that I'm upset about :(

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The tricky part about losing data on a lappie is the inability to setup a secondary drive to quickly install an OS to use some sort of data recovery tool on the damaged drive. If your Laptop will allow you to plugin a USB based HD, install Windows on it and allow you to boot from it, you maybe home scott-free.

Had a similar problem for a work computer. It wouldn't boot beyond the BIOS. Plugged in a secondary drive, installed windows on it, and installed the following program

[URL]http://www.binarybiz.com/vlab/windows.html[/URL]

Ben I can't tell you how well this works (better than GetDataBack because it wasn't able to recover shit)

Virtual lab restored everything and that too in a fraction of the speed. The only drawback is they charge you for the quantity you backup.

If your data is important to you, then you can safely assume that the money is well spent.

Trust me, you wont be disappointed

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You many not have to spend thousands to get you data recovered. Over the weekend I had data recovered (about 100Gigs) from my external hardrive for $200.

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assmunch_admin's tip about freezing the drive DOES work if the drive can still spin up. I've tried it. It's not bullshit. I recently did this with my work laptop hdd that crashed. If you can do this, pull it out, freeze it and then plug it into either another laptop or slave it as a data drive to your desktop pc and proceed to transfer the files over. You may want to select "copy" versus "transfer" so that if it begins to fail again, you'll have a second chance to recover your data after you freeze it again. Depending on the shape of your hdd, you really don't have a long time to copy the files over so think about that and figure an order of importance and let us know how it goes. If you don't have an external data and power line for this operation, you can easily find the part online. I've got one that uses USB 2.0 (I know, it's slow but it works) and it cost me like $11 out the door. Good luck.