Accessing hard disk drive

• Call4ljw

  7 Oct 10, 19:43

  Hi all!

  Anyone knows how to access a hard disk on a laptop which cant boot up?

  Thanks!
  

• 4sg

  7 Oct 10, 19:51

  Take out the HD and put in an 2.5" external drive casing.

  Connect this casing (with your HD) into your PC or another notebook.

  If your primary drive is C: the external drive will be D: 

  Extract all your important data from D: 

• Call4ljw

  7 Oct 10, 20:49

  Originally posted by 4sg:

  Take out the HD and put in an 2.5" external drive casing.

  Connect this casing (with your HD) into your PC or another notebook.

  If your primary drive is C: the external drive will be D: 

  Extract all your important data from D: 

  How to do it without taking out HD?

  It is a laptop as i mentioned, i dont think its a good idea to take out HD.

• 4sg

  7 Oct 10, 21:25

  It really depends on the fault.
  
  How serious the fault? Virus? OS corrupt? boot script corrupt? or what? 

  I cannot tell just like.
  
  If you want to boot from your notebook than you need to find out what is the problem and fixed it first.
  
  What I proposed is extracting your data without bothering to find out what is the problem.
  
  But is a general solution. If your hard disk is corrupted by virus which has erased your HD data, my above method also not work so readily. You need something more. 

• kenn3th

  7 Oct 10, 21:35

  Originally posted by Call4ljw:

  How to do it without taking out HD?

  It is a laptop as i mentioned, i dont think its a good idea to take out HD.

  Taking out the hard disk from a laptop in fact is as easy as taking it out from a desktop. 

  A.Do a hard disk diagnostics via the bios. (Check if it's hard disk failure)

  B. If there are operating system issues, fix it. 

  C. If all else fails,

  You have 2 choices

  -Use a Linux live CD then transferring info from the failing hard disk to an external hard disk

  -Use a preinstalled environment  there are many alternatives based on BART PE. If you are able to access your BIOS, set your boot list to CD/DVD drive (1st). Once it boots up from the CD, access  your hard disk via "my computer" on the p reinstalled environment and transfer it via usb to an external hard disk.

  Note: you will have to create your own presinstalled environment, iso first using Windows Xp sp1/sp2/sp3. It doesn't work with Windows 7. Currently there is work done on a Windows7 Preinstalled environment called Win7PE RescuePE, but instructions are vague and not easily followed. 

  http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

   

• Call4ljw

  7 Oct 10, 22:41

  Originally posted by 4sg:

  It really depends on the fault.
  
  How serious the fault? Virus? OS corrupt? boot script corrupt? or what? 

  I cannot tell just like.
  
  If you want to boot from your notebook than you need to find out what is the problem and fixed it first.
  
  What I proposed is extracting your data without bothering to find out what is the problem.
  
  But is a general solution. If your hard disk is corrupted by virus which has erased your HD data, my above method also not work so readily. You need something more. 

  Not my laptop.

  Anyway, the problem seems to be a corrupt registry, and i have tried what i could to recover it.

  I'm planning to take out the data then do a clean install.

• SBS7484P

  8 Oct 10, 09:42

  Originally posted by Call4ljw:

  How to do it without taking out HD?

  It is a laptop as i mentioned, i dont think its a good idea to take out HD.

  Tell that to the manufacturers.

• _Da_Dood_

  8 Oct 10, 10:07

  go download hieren boot disc

  http://www.hirensbootcd.net/download.html

  scroll to bottom to click on the continue button to download

  burn it on to a disc to make a boot disc den pop it into ur spoiled pc..

  boot with mini windows with ur external hdd already plugged in and copy all the contents of the spoilt hdd into ur backup hdd

  whole process takes less than 30 mins

• kenn3th

  8 Oct 10, 11:41

  Originally posted by _Da_Dood_:

  go download hieren boot disc

  http://www.hirensbootcd.net/download.html

  scroll to bottom to click on the continue button to download

  burn it on to a disc to make a boot disc den pop it into ur spoiled pc..

  boot with mini windows with ur external hdd already plugged in and copy all the contents of the spoilt hdd into ur backup hdd

  whole process takes less than 30 mins

  Nice  It's always good to have alternatives. 

• Call4ljw

  8 Oct 10, 14:14

  Originally posted by SBS7484P:

  Tell that to the manufacturers.

  Why? lol

  Anyway the laptop is quite a few years old already.

• Call4ljw

  8 Oct 10, 14:17

  Problem is solved already.

  Yeah, i do need a boot disc in case this problem happens again.

  Rgds.

• SBS7484P

  8 Oct 10, 21:46

  Hiren's Boot CD is a very good resource.

• Call4ljw

  9 Oct 10, 16:10

  Originally posted by SBS7484P:

  Hiren's Boot CD is a very good resource.

  It boots mini windows XP.

  I tried it but it cant detect my second disk.