G50V hard drive kaput?

[mortstiff]

Hello,My G50V - about 4 years old, Windows 7, 2 HDs - suddenly crashed and when I tried to reboot it, I kept getting the message 'missing operating system.' Was finally able to enter BIOS and reset the BIOS defaults (based on a recommendation I found online). The computer then booted normally, only when I go to 'My Computer' the two drives on my second HD (F and G) are no longer listed. My backups are on G. Am I to conclude the HD is fried? Is there a way to recover the contents? Thanks.

 

[fzabkar]

Does the other HDD spin up?

What is its model number?

Can you see the drive in Disk Management?

Can you see it in BIOS?

 

[mortstiff]

I rebooted and the drives showed up again and are accessible. In the meantime, I tried to make a mirror image of the drives using Maxtor software and it failed at 98%. The drives are listed in device manager as ST9250421AS - is that the model no. you're looking for? No apparent trouble with the other HDD except when I try to make a mirror image.

 

[fzabkar]

You may be able to get some of the remaining 2% with ddrescue (freeware). Ddrescue understands how to work around bad sectors. It also maintains a log file so that it can resume after an interruption.

 

[mortstiff]

Thanks for the advice - how does ddrescue work? Can I use it with Maxtor MaxBlast?

 

[fzabkar]

You can tell ddrescue to image from source to destination beginning at 98%.

http://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/manual/ddrescue_manual.html