Laptop HDD corrupted, help is wanted =)

[Doughbuy]

Alright, short version, my laptop hdd (laptop's my main comp) refuses to boot and I'm here posting on one of my other computers. Quick run-down of what happened and what I'm attempting to do to remedy the situation. Any advice is welcome.

So as of about 1 hr ago, I was torrenting while gaming (playing Post Mortem) when all of a sudden my comp locks up. Alright, stupid comp, we'll hard restart you. Turn it off, turn it on... goes to booting Windows screen. About 5 seconds in, comp restarts... and does this over and over again. Alright, now it's getting kinda annoying, but not too bad yet. I'll just run a Windows repair... grab my XP Pro disk, and attempt to reinstall windows (not reformat and reinstall, just a repair reinstall). Well La-de-fu*king-da, my comp did a dance on my head because it doesn't recognize my C: partition anymore and the recovery console can't do anything... tried this 3 times, same results. Now I feel like I'm in deep shiat.

Well, I still got some other tricks up my sleeve... I had an external 2.5" hdd case laying about, so I open up my laptop, stick the hdd in there, and see if a different computer can see it. Lo and behold... it can... but locks up everytime I try to access the drive. Great...

Well, now I'm at the stage where I'm using GetDataBack and hoping I can recover what stuff I feel is important (mainly my music and some programs) The program is running fairly well, no problems so far... but any other idea's ya'll can recommend? Thanks.

 

[Doughbuy]

Come on guys... I know some of ya'll out there have some ideas and suggestions...

One more thing, anybody have any idea why this happened in the first place? Would I be in trouble if I reinstalled everything and used it like normal again? Or should I just get a new HDD?

 

[ethel]

I had an external 2.5" hdd case laying about, so I open up my laptop, stick the hdd in there, and see if a different computer can see it. Lo and behold... it can... but locks up everytime I try to access the drive. Great...

99% chance your hard disk is b0rked I'm afraid. I really wouldn't try to use it for anything else - infact it's unlikely that you'll be able to install anything onto it.

One more thing, anybody have any idea why this happened in the first place?

It just happens with disks - they die. Until it happens to you, you don't really believe it, but own PCs for long enough and it sure as hell will happen - and it's only then that most of us (me included) implement a proper backup strategy [/quote]

 

[Doughbuy]

Thx for the advice. I've had a couple of HDD's die on me, and the only thing I could do was curse at the world... but luckily this time it seemed only to be a corrupt partition table. My GetDataBack program seemed to be able to get a lot of my stuff off, or the important ones at least. Imma give it a shot and reinstall Windows and everything on here, but I'll still keep up a real back-up... I got plenty of room as you can see =P

 

[ethel]

Blimey, didn't see that before - impressive stuff!

 

[CompuTronix]

Your laptop crrashes and reboots on two different drives, one of which was unfortunately corrupted due to multiple crashes. It's possible that the laptop's CPU cooler is glogged with dust, causeing it to crash when it is heavily loaded, such as gaming and loading windows.

I know it's a pain to disassemble a laptop to clean the CPU cooler, however, sometimes you can use a blow dryer or vacuum to clear the dust form intake and oulet ports.

Hope this helps

 

[Doughbuy]

Eh, I got the info out, but the drive is kaput. Can't delete the partition, can't reformat it, so I went to Fry's and bought a new laptop hdd. Down a hundred bucks, but oh well...

What pisses me off the most is I have to re-do all my settings. I had at least 50-60 torrent files queued up that I need to rack my brain to rmr what they were... not to mention my favorites. I'm going to try to see if I can reaccess them off my old hdd... hopefully...

 

[duthoy]

don't know which torrent program you uses, but on sharaza you can backup your temporary donload location, and restore it on the new drive, viola, the torrents and progress is restored.

 

[Doughbuy]

Yeah, I have backups of the torrents, I just forgot to grab them off the HDD... but I know I don't have backups of all the torrents because I switched from Azuereus to uTorrent (which I recommend everyone do if possible)... I just need to run GetDataBack again to retrieve all the info... ugh

Of all my HDD's to die, it had to be the only one that really mattered... and it was a Hitachi Travelstar... go figure...

/Hate Hitachi now
//Was a Hitachi 60 gig 7200 RPM... 2 1/2 yrs old
///Have a 100gig Fujistsu now... 5400 rpm though...

 

[CompuTronix]

My laptop data management solution uses a USB enclosure to support a 2.5" drive partitioned for a clone, and images, both created with Ghost 03. In a pinch such as this, you can simply swap drives, and continue working. The only catch is the human factor; the data is only as current as your last clone or image, so one must be diligent with performing backups at appropriate intervals.

Hope this help, and good luck.

 

[The_OGS]

One more thing, anybody have any idea why this happened in the first place?

The harddisk could be still mechanically okay, but hopelessly fooked-up from an NTFS point of view...
You need to run CHKDSK regularly (at least once/month) when you know you are about to reboot.
PageDefrag is also a great utility:
http://download.sysinternals.com/Files/PageDefrag.zip
Microsoft just purchased the Sysinternals company (because their stuff is good).
I would 'delpart' your old 7200RPM Hitachi, and see if it still functions with new/blank-from-the-factory setting.
Have you tried to simply hook it up (external or whatever) and CHKDSK it?
Oh well, HDs are eventually gonna die on ya... just a matter of time.
Perhaps you multi-tasked that one to death (heat) but you never know.
Prevention is clearly the best cure in any event,
Regards

 

[Doughbuy]

Yeah, I try to keep my laptop as cool as possible, I got the Antec laptop cooler which works fairly well, and my laptop bottom's fairly cool. Eh, death is death.

And I tried hooking it external to run a chkdisk, but uh... windows freezes everytime I try to do anything with the drive, only GetDataBack was able to access it.. shrug...

Anybody want a dead 60gig 7200RPM hitachi 2.5" HDD?

And backup... psh, backups for wussies, real men rmr all their settings and cry when their hdd's die (All my hdd's are for storage, usually if one dies, it's not too bad if it's not the one with my windows installation, GetDataBack works really well for me so I rarely lose things... but this time it was my windows installation. Go figure, Murphy's law > me.

 

[yquo]

Check the brand of the hard drive and download a tool to check the hard drive from the brand's website. You might have to do a low level format to try to repair the drive, you will lose evertyhing in it but perhaps you will be able to give it some use.

 

[Doughbuy]

Hmmm... I guess I can try that. Tried to format it in Dos... no luck. This is why I usually stick with Seagate, 5 yr warranty... I could just RMA this HDD.. oh well, too bad I can't build my own laptops.

 

[Doughbuy]

HELL YEAH, I'm a HDD power user... well, the hdd is beyond hope, tried to boot it up again, and I heard clicking noises... and all of us knows what that means, but I was able to grab all the remaining data I needed...

Got all my torrents back, all my favorites and application data (Those were my 2 biggest issues) and everything's installed and back to shipshape form. Thanks for all the advice peeps. Guess I'll use my dead laptop hdd and see what happens when it hits the concrete at 80 miles an hour =P