Am I screwed?????

[aloser]

Hi,
My laptop HD has some sort of problem (don't know exactly, but think it might be a virus) - anyway, it's pretty much gone (boot sector) - everything else SEEMS to be ok. Can I somehow get my contents back??? There is SO much "stuff" I need on it - that's the only computer I had for like 9 months, so couldn't really do any sort of "real" backup. I was going to do a complete backup when I noticed it was acting up - and my uncle said my HD is all but gone, possibly my DVD player too. Any ideas? I would ideally like to use my HD in my desktop (I have no real intent to attempt to reinstall Windows). Is that possible?

 

[jvarszegi]

You can buy a 2.5" drive enclosure, put your drive in it, and hook it up to some other computer via USB and/or Firewire. Unless your data is very valuable (and it probably isn't since you didn't back it up), I wouldn't recommend sending it to a disk-recovery specialist; those services are very expensive and you aren't guaranteed results. Maybe someone on the board can recommend a good disk utility that'll help you figure out what's saveable.

 

[Connoisseur]

If you can afford $70-80 and your data is worth it, get GetDataBack. It's awesome file recovery software. I had the same exact problem with one of my drives (bad boot sector happened just before the hard-drive started clicking) and I was able to access and copy all the files to another drive before scrapping the busted one. It's really simple to use and is invaluable