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Laptop hard drive failed?

C

coolVariable

Diamond Member
My laptop hard drive stopped working on my trip to Singapore/Hong Kong last week.
3 1/2 months after I bought this laptop!!!!
Now I am back in the States and trying to figure out how I can recover my data on the drive.
There is absolutely not physical damage to the drive and at most it was bumped around a little while I travelled. (The problem - I believe - started on the plane when I was watching a movie of HDD and it kept freezing at the slightest movement of the laptop. In the evening I had problems connecting to a wifi network. Computer froze ... restart ... error mesage.)

there is some "clicking like" sound when the drive boots up but it does not sound like the "clicking" I remember from older drives ... it sounds much softer.
The Bios does not recognize the drive and gives an error "2100: HDD0 (hard disc drive) initialization error (1)". In the boot menu list it lists HDD0 with a "device error".

I tried unplugging the drive and plugging it back in - no luck.
Tried putting the drive in an external USB enclosure and connecting it to another computer - no luck. (Recognizes that it is a mass storage medium but gets a device not working properly error.)


Will try cooling the drive tonight to see if that helps.


What else can I do? Since the drive is not recognized I cannot run any recovery software ...

The drive:
Seagate Momentus 7200.1
100GB SATA laptop HDD




Anybody have any recommendations with companies that do data recovery?
How much will it cost? Best case / worst case.


Cam Business Solutions

OC Data Recovery



PS: FVCKING LENOVO TOLD ME THAT THEY DO NOT OFFER ANY SERVICE TO RECOVER THE DATA FROM THE HDD AND THAT THEY WILL CHARGE ME FOR THE REPLACEMENT DRIVE IF A RECOVERY COMPANY OPENS THE DRIVE, DESPITE THE DRIVE CLEARLY BEING UNDER WARRANTY!!! THEY DON'T CARE THAT I CAN EVIDENCE RIGHT NOW THAT THE DRIVE LOOKS PERFECTLY FINE AND THAT THERE IS NO VISIBLE PHYSICAL DAMAGE!


 
I think you've covered all your options. If you can't get it to work by cooling it, professional data recovery's all that's left. That's bs that Lenovo will void the warranty if a recovery center opens the drive, but in the end that'll be the smallest portion of the bill. I can't give recommendations for a service to use, but any choice will be quite expensive.
 
Thanks for the quick reply lxskllr.
OCDatarecovery emailed me that it costs $295 - $895 for basic recovery and $895 - $1,795 for advanced recoveries (incl. clean room).
Someone from my company once used used Cam Business Solutions and it "wasn't that expensive ... $400 - $600 maybe"

I am really pissed about Lenovo!
Their crappy hardware fails after 3 1/2 months and they tell me that I might be charged if I use a data recovery service that opens the HDD.

 
Cooled the HDD for almost 5 1/2 hours in my freezer. No luck.
No drives were recognized when I plugged it in via the external.
I don't think that result will change if I put it in longer / set the freezer colder.
 
Originally posted by: coolVariable

PS: FVCKING LENOVO TOLD ME THAT THEY DO NOT OFFER ANY SERVICE TO RECOVER THE DATA FROM THE HDD AND THAT THEY WILL CHARGE ME FOR THE REPLACEMENT DRIVE IF A RECOVERY COMPANY OPENS THE DRIVE, DESPITE THE DRIVE CLEARLY BEING UNDER WARRANTY!!! THEY DON'T CARE THAT I CAN EVIDENCE RIGHT NOW THAT THE DRIVE LOOKS PERFECTLY FINE AND THAT THERE IS NO VISIBLE PHYSICAL DAMAGE!
Click to expand...


hey hey...no drive company let alone laptop maker warranties data security or recovery. its known that drives fail which is why backups/raid are so important. if your data was important, you should have known that. drives either die young from a defect early on or from age so they tend not to die middle aged. you got nipped early. best you can hope for is replacement.

special data recovery is expensive.

rarely do drives suffer physical visible damage before they fail.

google up googles recent harddrive failure study if you want to see how flaky drives are. and of course lenovo didn't make the drive😛 you just played the drive lottery and got lucky😉 its not something you can avoid by switching brands or whatever. only data redundancy will save you.
 
If ya haven't trashed the drive with the freezing trick, I would try one last thing. That drive should connect directly to an internal SATA port. I would do that, and try the trial version of GetDataBack.

Good Luck!
 
Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
Originally posted by: coolVariable

PS: FVCKING LENOVO TOLD ME THAT THEY DO NOT OFFER ANY SERVICE TO RECOVER THE DATA FROM THE HDD AND THAT THEY WILL CHARGE ME FOR THE REPLACEMENT DRIVE IF A RECOVERY COMPANY OPENS THE DRIVE, DESPITE THE DRIVE CLEARLY BEING UNDER WARRANTY!!! THEY DON'T CARE THAT I CAN EVIDENCE RIGHT NOW THAT THE DRIVE LOOKS PERFECTLY FINE AND THAT THERE IS NO VISIBLE PHYSICAL DAMAGE!
Click to expand...


hey hey...no drive company let alone laptop maker warranties data security or recovery. its known that drives fail which is why backups/raid are so important. if your data was important, you should have known that. drives either die young from a defect early on or from age so they tend not to die middle aged. you got nipped early. best you can hope for is replacement.

special data recovery is expensive.

rarely do drives suffer physical visible damage before they fail.

google up googles recent harddrive failure study if you want to see how flaky drives are. and of course lenovo didn't make the drive😛 you just played the drive lottery and got lucky😉 its not something you can avoid by switching brands or whatever. only data redundancy will save you.
Click to expand...

I understand that they don't warrant data security. What REALLY PISSES ME OFF THOUGH is that they are planning to charge me for the drive replacement if I have the data recovered by a third party vendor (if that vendor has to open the drive).
 
Originally posted by: Old Hippie
If ya haven't trashed the drive with the freezing trick, I would try one last thing. That drive should connect directly to an internal SATA port. I would do that, and try the trial version of GetDataBack.

Good Luck!
Click to expand...


I don't think that will work.
Bios doesn't recognize the drive, so I can't hook it up to an internal SATA with a running OS since laptops only have 1 SATA connector.
 
Originally posted by: coolVariable
Originally posted by: Old Hippie
If ya haven't trashed the drive with the freezing trick, I would try one last thing. That drive should connect directly to an internal SATA port. I would do that, and try the trial version of GetDataBack.

Good Luck!
Click to expand...


I don't think that will work.
Bios doesn't recognize the drive, so I can't hook it up to an internal SATA with a running OS since laptops only have 1 SATA connector.
Click to expand...

i was gonna suggest GetDataBack as well, however its only flaw is the drive has to actually spin for it to work, it is an amazing lil program tho, saved my ass more then once
 
Does the drive spin? The program I always use to recover data is File Scavenger. It works great. If the drive spins but windows says something like "Drive not formatted" or something like that in file scavenger select Defunct Volume Search & then select the drive you want to search. Start it & in most cases it will recover data. Good luck!
 
so I can't hook it up to an internal SATA with a running OS since laptops only have 1 SATA connector.
Click to expand...

Sorry. I thought you had a desktop at your disposal. I'm just looking at eliminating the SATA to USB interface of the external case. If you do get to a desktop, there would be no harm in trying it.

EDIT. Just in case you're confused, your 2.5" drive will connect directly to a 3.5" SATA drive connector, if you use a SATA power connector. They are the same.
 
I do have a desktop.
But the cable (as far as I remember) is only for the long "SATA connector" not that short mirrored SATA plug ...
I guess the shorter thing is for power?

Here is a pic of a Laptop SATA


Do you really think that program might work if I hook the drive up to my desktop?
The laptop Bios DOES NOT detect the drive and gives a "device error"!
When connecting the drive via USB windoes DOES NOT SEE ANY drives or partitions!
(In device manager it usually says USB mass storage device and then that there is some error with the device or that it cannot start.)

How can that progam work when neither the Bios nor windows can even address the drive?
 
This may work...I recently read that the live Linux Distros were made to recover data from failed hard drives. These Distros run in RAM so just get any live Distro, run it in your DVD drive. It will take a while to load but once it does you will have a fully funtional PC.

At this point you should be able to go into "my computer", view your hard drive, copy the files you need to a removable media (thumb drive).

See andantech Linux forums for more info. That's where I discovered this bit of trivia.
 
if the data is realy important then just pay for the recovery (as any tricks you try to recover could further damage the drive and decrease the chance of recovering your data).
 
Originally posted by: coolVariable
But how can the some software "see" the drive if the BIOS cannot and the OS cannot?
Click to expand...

it can't. software recovery requires a drive that is only limping along, not dead. such a drive could be formated successfully perhaps even have some file access with hickups and such or just not be able to access files because the file system is garbled a bit and so windows asks to format the disc instead. software works on garbled data, not on dead hardware. if you can't get it detected at all then its not useful.
 
The first thing you need to do is try the drive in another computer to see if you can see it
and get data off it before it is a total loss. There is also the slight possibility, that the problem
is Not the drive, but, maybe, a chipset problem on the Motherboard of the laptop. After all,
the chips that operate the drive are on there. Did you check device manager for errors (if you
can get the laptop to even boot up) ? ?


 
For all of those not reading the initial post:

There is some "clicking like" sound when the drive boots up but it does not sound like the "clicking" I remember from older drives ... it sounds much softer.
The Bios does not recognize the drive and gives an error "2100: HDD0 (hard disc drive) initialization error (1)". In the boot menu list it lists HDD0 with a "device error".
<edit>AFTER THAT IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO BOOT</edit>


I tried unplugging the drive and plugging it back in - no luck.
Tried putting the drive in an external USB enclosure and connecting it to another computer - no luck. (Recognizes that it is a mass storage medium but gets a device not working properly error.)
 
USB enclosures can be a little iffy, even with a good drive. I would try hooking it up to a SATA port on a desktop just to make sure. Also, point some data recovery software at the drive while it's in a desktop. You may get lucky :gift:
 
Someone here at AT successfully recovered data by swapping the PCB board of the failed drive with the new board removed from a brand new drive.

If tha data was as important to me as it is to you, I would even go as far as replacing the platters.

Warranty or not, you want your files, right...? And you are considering paying several hundred dollars for data recovery, correct...? That's a price of a new computer.

I would get this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16822146226


...and swap whatever would be necessary to get my files back.

Good luck!
 
Here is a pic of a Laptop SATA
Click to expand...

Your pic. doesn't work...just like your drive. 😀 Why, pray tell, would you even question "How" it works? IF your drive is mechanically moving, just do as I suggested. Even if you think it's not, what would be the harm in trying my suggestion? 😕

If it's not worth your time to try anything, it's not worth my time to suggest.
 
Your hard drive has a mechanical problem (versus a logical problem). It could be the PCB, the heads, or the platter.

"What to do next?" depends on the value of the data. If the data has high value, then the best choice is to give it to somebody with experience and proper equipment for the data recovery. The prices you were quoted are in line with expected prices.

If the data isn't worth that cost, you can try a PCB exchange, but that's about it. THERE'S NO WAY that you will successfully execute a platter or head swap yourself. Especially on a 2.5-inch drive.
 
Hi guys.
Thank you all for the great input.

I would have tried plugging the drive into the internal SATA of my desktop but that would have required me also getting a SATA power adapter (the SATA drives in my desktop all use the regular power plug).

Today, I dropped the drive off at a repair shop that previously was able to successfully get the data off the drive of a co-worker of mine.

I hope it won't be too expensive.
 
BTW - any good ideas / solutions for backup software?
Ideally I would like something like ActiveSync that syncs the files/folders selected to a network drive (or a USB drive) whenever it is connected.

Would be useful if it only syncs changes in files and not the whole file (e.g. my active Outlook files are all 3+ GB so if each whole file is copied each time it would take pretty long).
 
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