Data recovery...

So my laptops hard drive is apparently messed up. I got the blue screen of death and called support they said it was the hard drive so they sent me a new one. They dont support data recovery so its $100 that I'm not paying.

Anyway we called a few times and one of the times we got someone who was willing to try and help with data recovery. The computer turns on but it wont run Windows. He said when I turn it on I needed to hit F12 and then something to do with checkdisk and having an external hard drive hooked up to transfer my data onto. When I called support back, they wont let me talk to this guy, and none of the other tech support people will help me because they "dont support data recovery".

Just wondering if anyone on here knows anything I could do...anything about hitting F12 when i first boot up and doing checkdisk. I found this thread that looks like it might have something to do with what he was talking about. http//forum.freeipodguide.com/about46410.html[]http//forum.freeipodguide.com/about46410.html

This article might also be able to help you with that. It is outlined for Windows 2000, but the process is generally the same http//www.datadoctors.com/help/questions/question.cfm?id=15222

That was actually very helpful, thank you. I was able to boot from my Windows disc (I didnt know how before) and then I saw that it had said to burn Linux Knoppix to a cd and boot from that. I guess you should be able to run Linux and access your files and get them onto a external hard drive or something.

The problem is that either its just not working or I'm doing something wrong. I burned Linus to a cd and tried to boot from the cd, but whenever I do that it just skips over booting from a cd and goes straight to the "Windows did not start normally" I know that I'm booting it from cd right because I can do it with the Windows cd, so I'm afraid that I didnt burn the cd right. All I did was download Linux, extract the files, right clicked them and clicked send to D and then went to the D drive and clicked burn these items to disc through Windows Explorer. Is this not how you do it? I wasnt sure because then its like they are on the disc, but when you put the disc in what is it suppossed to do? Would it just automatically run Linux because the files are on there or what?

Did you download the Linux Knoppix CD, or did you just download linux? If you just downloaded Linux, that's why. You will need to go to http//www.knoppix.net/get.php and download the CD (it requires a torrent client to download. It mentions Bittorent, but I personally go with Azureus). After you download it, you will need to burn the file (it should be one file, probably marked with .isourl==http://=http:///url as the extension). I would recommend NOT using the default windows burner to do this, but rather opting for Nero or SonicCD or any other commercially available software (there should be at least 1 on your computer). Just make sure to grab an English copy, and you can choose between a DVD or a CD (the CD should be fine, and I believe that it is the 4th link from the top).

Hope this helps get the problem fixed for you. Sorry for being so long winded.

Yeah, I have already downloaded the CD version of Knoppix through bittorrent so I know thats right. I guess theres two things I'm confused about. What exactly do I burn? Does it matter? I burned one where it was just the whole Knoppix folder as in One folder with a few subfolders and files. The other one I burned I took all the subfolders and files out and burned those, since the first folder was really just to keep them all together. Neither worked. I dont know if its because I burned it through Windows....or maybe its just the computer, I dont know. And also I'm wondering, just because the files are burnt on as a data CD, when you put it in and boot from the CD it will know to automatically run Linux? I mean how will it know what to do with all the files?

When you went into your burning software, did you select the option to "Burn image to CD" or something along those lines? I downloaded the file myself to see how it is set up, and it has the folder, then in the main folder is the .isourl==http://=http:///url file (and a few other files which I don't believe are actually necessary to burn).

You need to burn the image file (which is in the folder; the name should read KNOPPIX_V5.1.1CD-2007-01-04-EN.iso) using your software. It should then be read as a CD by your computer.

Don't worry about burning the other 7 files that are in the initial folder, just "Burn image to CD" and select the .isourl==http://=http:///url file.

My hard drive died last summer, and I couldn't load Windows for anything. I tried everything! I got an external hard drive enclosure. Dell replaced my hard drive, so I got it in the mail, put it in my computer, took the broken one out, and was good to go. For all the data, I put the broken hard drive in the enclosure and plugged it into my computer, just like an external hard drive. I opened My Computer and saw the external drive, and was able to copy all my information off like that. Some files were broken and didn't copy, but 98% of my information was copied to the new drive.




Real inexpensive

Enclosure on eBay[=http//cgi.ebay.com/USB-2-0-2-5-IDE-HDD-Hard-Drive-Mobile-Case-Enclosure_W0QQitemZ190129999787QQihZ009QQcategoryZ74949QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem]Enclosure on eBay

Thanks a lot to both of you. I am going to karma you up whenever I can. I'm burning Knoppix again right now, it probably didnt work before because I extracted the iso file and then burned it. Hopefully I didn't lose a bunch of files when I ran chkdsk, I heard that it can delete files. I will keep you updated on what happens next.

And I wish that I could try an enclosure as an external hard drive, but unfortunately I have to send the bad drive to Dell (surely so they can "fix" it and send it to another customer) as soon as I can or they will charge my credit card.

Yeah I had to do the same thing (send it back or else get charged for it) but the women told me I had like five days or something, so in that time period I was able to copy all my information....

Either way, good luck )

Oh god, I keep getting closer and closer to hit more and more obstacles. I managed to burn the Linux cd and boot from it. I found all of my files in My Documents, but when I went to copy it to my external hard drive, I got "You cannot drop any items into a directory in which you do not have permission to write" as you can see here[=http//lifehacker.com/software/disk-recovery/geek-to-live--rescue-files-with-a-boot-cd-192982.php]here under step 4, and as you can see it says to right click it and click "Change read/write mode" which didnt work for me.

I see from link you provided me (datadoctors.com) that my only other choice is to try and burn to a cd or dvd, which seems possible but much more time consuming and difficult seeing as I can only fit 4.7 GB per dvd so I'll need at least two. And even bigger an issue is that when I use K3B or whatever its called, the Linux burning software, it makes it hard to choose my files. When I try to find the folder where My documents is located, it adds the WHOLE folder instead of going INTO the folder and letting me select. The only way I can see around this is copying My Documents onto the Desktop and then choosing it from there.

I'm not really sure why it won't give you the option to change the read/write mode when booting with the Linux CD. However, you will need to separate the folders within My Documents into separate ones and place them on the desktop to burn them (that's the best choice). I don't know for sure if the K3B software burns DVDs, however, but I don't see why it wouldn't.

I know it is a hassle to do all this, but at least this process is getting you closer to recovery, and you should still be able to save most of your stuff )

Try to follow the steps listed in your link again, and if you still can't change the permissions, then you will probably just want to burn the information onto discs.

Hey forgot to update. Finally got all of my stuff off using two DVDs. Thank you so much for your help. I'll try to remember to karma you. D

I'm glad to hear that it all worked out for you )