Hard Drive Failure

[Icy Penguin]

Ugh...I have an HP Pavilion. My warranty expired two days ago (I've already had to replace a faulty battery).

Was working fine today while I was in class. Brought it home - then, when booting up:

- "windows failed to start"

- "...winload.exe" ... "could not be loaded becase the application is missing or corrupt.

Fooled around with the BIOS and did a hard drive self test - error code #7 - 01 fail.

I know I'm stupid for not doing it, but I didn't back it up to an external drive or anything like that.

Shelling out the money isn't the worst part - it's losing all my stuff.

It says I can use my "windows installation disc" (which I never recieved - nor made one) to restart and repair the computer.

Any suggestions?

[teet]

I would download the latest version of ubuntu and boot it up. It will detect your hard disk (if it isn't too corrupt). You could then plug in an external hard drive, flash drive, or connect to another computer on your network and copy-n-paste your stuff over.

-teet

Edit: http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download

[Templarian]

Yep thats gonna be your best bet. And it sounds like your laptops drive is still spinning which is a good thing if it wasn't you would have to shell out to get your data off.

Once you get your files off slip in a new HD (held in by one screw usually). So you don't have to buy a external HD just slip in a DVD or 2 and burn to those.

[Icy Penguin]

Okay - sounds good. How do I install it though if I can't boot up? Just mount it to a CD and boot from it?

[Templarian]

Well hopefully you have more than one computer or go to a friends house and download it and burn it to a disc.

[twdesignz06]

Would you be able to run the manufacturer's disk utility from a floppy to test the drive to see if it's bad? I think that most if not all manufacturers have some sort of utility to check their discs.

Just go into your BIOS and change the boot order to boot from the floppy first.

[Icy Penguin]

Well, I can't get into that utility if there was one - and of course, I don't have a Vista recovery CD.

I was told that Ubuntu can't detect NTFS...

[Templarian]

No you have to download the utility and place it on a Thumbdrive... or floppy i guess.

Thats weird... you should always receive a windows disc with your computer... or at least a manufacturer win disc.

And yes it can detect NTFS (unless its completely corrupted... or your drive isn't spinning up).

[Icy Penguin]

Yeah- they stopped sending the recovery disks along with the laptops a little while ago. It has instructions for creating one yourself or you can sned for one for $60 - but I never got around to it.

HP support came through today - they're sending me a new hard drive free of charge. :)

[Theros]

Yeah- they stopped sending the recovery disks along with the laptops a little while ago. It has instructions for creating one yourself or you can sned for one for $60 - but I never got around to it.

HP support came through today - they're sending me a new hard drive free of charge. :)

Do they still want your existing drive? I'd still run the Ubuntu live CD just to see if you can save your data.

[teet]

Do they still want your existing drive? I'd still run the Ubuntu live CD just to see if you can save your data.

I agree. There's a good possibility that your data can be retrieved.

With the latest release of ubuntu (7.10 'gutsy gibbon') you can now READ and WRITE to NTFS partitions (before you could only read them). Pretty nifty.

-teet

[Icy Penguin]

Download was at 95% - then the router died and I had to start all over - wait another 2 - 3 hours. :(

I bought an external hard drive USB enclosure kit that I could use to attach as a secondary drive to my other computer, but it has next to no instructions as to how to attach the HD to the kit...and I'm pretty sure it's too small (it's a 2.5")... not sure what to use.

[Icy Penguin]

Hmm...so none of those suggestions worked.

Took it to a friend who managed to get one of my partitions, but not the one I needed.

There were a lot of bad sectors on it, apparently.

So I'm just gonna do my best to make up on the projects that are gone.

Thanks for the help. :)

[Jeff Wheeler]

I wouldn’t give up just yet. Try out some various data recovery utilities, and, if you have enough space, do a direct disk copy off that drive in case there are any physical problems with it (dd if=/dev/hda of=/mnt/backup, or something similar) so that you can continue to salvage it later.

[Icy Penguin]

Hmm..ok well finally got Ubuntu booting from the CD working - it actually detects my partitions - 1.0 GB Volume (localhost/wamp server), 1.0 GB Volume (2) (my icy penguin stuff), 12.0 GB volume (backup volume:ponder: ), and 79.2 gb volume (C drive).

But when I open any of them up, it says "cannot mount volume). Has some weird error message after that - not sure where to go from here.

edit: same error message when I try to open up my flash drive:

Operation not supported Mount is desined because NTFS is marked to be in use...on the command line: mount - t ntfs-3g /dev/sda7 /media/disk -o (which returns 'mount: only root can do that')...... or add the option to the relevant row in the /etc/ fstab file: /dev/sda7 /media/disk ntfs-3g deafults,force 0 0 (which returns 'permission denied')

:look:

edit: really starting to like ubuntu... :hugegrin:

[Theros]

Hmm..ok well finally got Ubuntu booting from the CD working - it actually detects my partitions - 1.0 GB Volume (localhost/wamp server), 1.0 GB Volume (2) (my icy penguin stuff), 12.0 GB volume (backup volume:ponder: ), and 79.2 gb volume (C drive).

But when I open any of them up, it says "cannot mount volume). Has some weird error message after that - not sure where to go from here.

edit: same error message when I try to open up my flash drive:

Operation not supported Mount is desined because NTFS is marked to be in use...on the command line: mount - t ntfs-3g /dev/sda7 /media/disk -o (which returns 'mount: only root can do that')...... or add the option to the relevant row in the /etc/ fstab file: /dev/sda7 /media/disk ntfs-3g deafults,force 0 0 (which returns 'permission denied')

:look:

edit: really starting to like ubuntu... :hugegrin:

heh...you need to be in Root command to do anything from the terminal in Linux... try putting sudo before any terminal command. Just remember to input your password when it tells you to.

[Icy Penguin]

heh...you need to be in Root command to do anything from the terminal in Linux... try putting sudo before any terminal command. Just remember to input your password when it tells you to.

Hmm.. ok. Tried 'mount - t ntfs-3g /dev/sda7 /media/disk -o' but that returns 'mount: option requires an argument - - o'

This is all very confusing. :S

[Madness]

i just went and made a backup after seeing this :D

hope things workout for you

[BS]

Time Machine FTW!

[Madness]

thnx for reminding me that i dont have an apple

o wait i do

http://www.tuaw.com/media/2006/06/macbooktrash.jpg

[Icy Penguin]

FIXED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Great help over at the Ubuntu forums - a bunch of little problems that I figured out and got my Icy Penguin stuff back.

:D:D:D

Thanks to everyone who helped here too.

:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D





:D

[Icy Penguin]

I know I shouldn't be getting greedy - but I kind of want to be able to get my music, etc. as well.

Ubuntu says I have: disk, disk(2), disk(3), and disk-l (which is the Icy Penguin disk).

But, when I click on 'disk' - it takes me to 'disk(3)'. Same goes for disk(2).

[Theros]

methinks you should try the ubuntu forums again, there's much more help over there.