Hello, My problem 250G Sata II disk doesn't click when spinning, and isn't noticeably slow, but won't boot XP and goes into its installation screen.
Also booting off a Ubuntu CD shows the SMART status as “Disk Failure Imminent”. The details give Reallocated Sector Count as 1024 Sectors. I can access a very limited amount of the disk but unfortunately not any of the data I'm after, mainly family photos.
Feel free to tell me off about backing up...
I'm completely new to all this but ideas gathered so far are:
1)Buy a usb/sata adaptor and try hooking up to the laptop to read it.
2)Use the second 500G drive in the machine as primary, installing XP on it, then put the problem drive back in as secondary and try to read it.
3)Try to fix the disk using Microsoft recovery console (not sure which command - FIXBOOT, FIXMBR, CHKDSK?)
4)Try the check disk and repair option on the standard Ubuntu CD.
5)Ubuntu Rescue-Remix on boot CD; the tool ddrescue does repeated low level reads and can build up a disk image on the second disk. Then extract the desired files from the image, or possibly extract the whole image to a new drive(?)
Do 1 or 2 have a chance of seeing more of the disk than the standard Ubuntu CD?
Am I right to be nervous of 3 & 4, as they write to disk and have more potential to damage the disk further? Alternatively will trying to fix just the boot area pose no risk to the rest of the disk?
So 5 looks tempting. Is it likely to have more success with its clever reading method? Is it low risk as it is read only?
Or any other ideas? Thanks in advance,
Adam
Also booting off a Ubuntu CD shows the SMART status as “Disk Failure Imminent”. The details give Reallocated Sector Count as 1024 Sectors. I can access a very limited amount of the disk but unfortunately not any of the data I'm after, mainly family photos.
Feel free to tell me off about backing up...
I'm completely new to all this but ideas gathered so far are:
1)Buy a usb/sata adaptor and try hooking up to the laptop to read it.
2)Use the second 500G drive in the machine as primary, installing XP on it, then put the problem drive back in as secondary and try to read it.
3)Try to fix the disk using Microsoft recovery console (not sure which command - FIXBOOT, FIXMBR, CHKDSK?)
4)Try the check disk and repair option on the standard Ubuntu CD.
5)Ubuntu Rescue-Remix on boot CD; the tool ddrescue does repeated low level reads and can build up a disk image on the second disk. Then extract the desired files from the image, or possibly extract the whole image to a new drive(?)
Do 1 or 2 have a chance of seeing more of the disk than the standard Ubuntu CD?
Am I right to be nervous of 3 & 4, as they write to disk and have more potential to damage the disk further? Alternatively will trying to fix just the boot area pose no risk to the rest of the disk?
So 5 looks tempting. Is it likely to have more success with its clever reading method? Is it low risk as it is read only?
Or any other ideas? Thanks in advance,
Adam