Apparent hard drive crash, need to rescue my files

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aprilinie

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Aug 3, 2013
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Is it even possible? Laptop is a Toshiba Satellite S855. I just bought the darn thing in January, Windows 8, has Kaspersky 2.0 Pure SUPPOSEDLY protecting it,. Will not load to Windows. Has automatic repair loop, black screen. Long story short, virus, hard drive failure. But I still want to get my files (photos, docs) If it is possible, how? Please help.
 

serge44

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Mar 16, 2011
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HDDs are the most fragile part in a laptop. It'll be the first thing to go after a moderate drop, and no software can protect it from it. Have you recently dropped the laptop?

The bit where I'm confused is when you mention a virus. A virus will not (likely, but anything's possible) damage your HDD permanently. Might destroy your file table and partition, but not physical damage to it. Can you provide a bit more info, what happened with the virus? What are the symptoms? How does it fail, when does it fail?

Stepping a bit ahead, regarding your recovery question, yeah, there are softwares that can get some info back from physically damaged drives, but you'll need to connect your drive as a secondary drive into another computer. Considering it's a laptop, you'll need to open it and remove the hard drive and connect it to another PC trough an external 2.5" HDD enclosure.
 

aprilinie

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Well here's the story...
Upon startup, Toshiba screen appears, then a screen with a frowny face and a message that flashes so fast I cannot read it. I am able to catch few words :" your computer ran into some problems, were just collecting some info, your computer will restart..."
it then goes to the Toshiba screen again, says "preparing automatic repair" then fades to a black screen. and stays there.
I cannot get to Windows, I can get to the BIOS. I have not dropped or jarred my computer, so that option is a no go.
Any ideas?
Also, when I ran the rescue disk from Kaspersky, I ran into a problem or two..it said corrupt file cannot continue. Basically, dead end?
 

serge44

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Does sound like the HDD to me. You should be able to put your laptop into warranty, but that doesn't solve your files extraction issue. The thing is that in order to recover your files, you're going to have to open your laptop, remove the HDD and connect it into a PC as a secondary HDD, either directly trough the SATA adapters or trough a SATA case. This will most likely void your laptop warranty. So you're in a crossroad - TRY to get your files (as it's not 100% guaranteed you're going to be able to get them) but lose the laptop's warranty, or make your warranty valid but lose all your data.

My best suggestion would be to contact your laptop's vendor trying to claim the warranty but explore if they have the possibility of extracting the data for you.
 
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