Please help, Windows 10 not booting, can I remove HD and transfer files?

[desidude]

Hello friends,

I hope you are doing well. I really hope someone can help me.

I have a Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga 12 laptop with Windows 10.

I was using it to do some work on Excel, and using the internet (all clean, no viruses etc.) and then the computer shut down all of a sudden.

It gave me the Unmountable Boot Volume error. After that it did not restart to Windows, I can however enter Lenovo Diagnostics and the Bios.

I ran the Lenovo diagnostics on the HDD. The targeted read test failed. Now I am running the recover bad sectors tool test, and it is telling me that 17 sectors are bad, the test is still running.

The HD is a Toshiba laptop HD MQ01ACF050.

The laptop, which is 6 months old is still under warranty (second repair in 2 months

My question is, is there some way I can recover the lost excel files?

1) Can I remove the HD, put it in a external HD casing, and recover the files by connecting it to another laptop?

Or

2) Is there any other way to do it?

I can get access to a CD/DVD burner if needed.

Thank you so much. Please help.

desidude

 

[Ketchup]

For another laptop, your external hard drive enclosure is the best idea. Having a desktop would be even better since you can plug it into a SATA port (you only would need a SATA cable, which could be pulled off the CD/DVD drive if it has one).

Sorry to hear about your bad luck here.

Just a thought: while you laptop is out, get and SSD, and clone the hard drive to it upon its return. You will then have a backup, and a much faster laptop.

 

[desidude]

Thank you ketchup, I appreciate your help.

I got a Laptop Hard Drive Disk Enclosure from the Big Box store, and now need to figure out the next steps.

Do I just insert the laptop HD in the enclosure, and then connect the enclosure via the USB port to my laptop?

Will I need to install additional software to read the HD, especially as it has bad sectors?

I do not have a desktop at home, can I manage with another laptop?

Any advice you can give me will be very helpful.

Thank you!
desidude

 

[Ketchup]

If it needs to be said, let chkdsk finish.

No additional software needed. Connect SATA and power cord, plug in the USB, plug in the SATA cable. copy your important files to your laptop.

The amount of data you can recover will depend on where the bad sectors are, and what Windows did with them. Most likely, it just market them as bad (which means no data in that sector can be accessed). If the bad sectors are on the boot partiition (most likely, based on your discription), or somewhere in Windows, it really won't matter, as you are just pulling data off the drive. We can only hope none of your important data is not in those bad sectors.

If it helps, note that a 500 GB hard drive has roughly 1 Billion sectors, so going by the odds there is a good chance your data is still there, assuming the issues just started.

I hope you have a backup of your important files. If not, this will be your lesson to do so.

Good luck!

 

[desidude]

Hi,

I took out the laptop hardrive from the laptop and connected it via USB to my other working laptop.

The file explorer on my working laptop recognizes a D: when I connect the other HD in (to the working laptop).

However, the file explorer is taking a long time to open anything in D:

Is there some way I can check if the HD is working and has data in it?

Do I just wait?

Now, I am getting a message saying D: is inaccessible, parameter is incorrect.

Any thoughts please?

Thank you

desidude

 

[Puffnstuff]

Brother your drive is dead and you need to rma your laptop for repairs. This is exactly why you should back up any important files when you create them. I use external hd's and BD's for the task as well as cloud services which 10 offers in one drive for free so take advantage of them. If you use google use google drive which also offers free cloud storage and never face the prospect of lost files again.

 

[Ketchup]

So, are things getting any better? Slow doean't necessarily mean dead. Stick with it a while longer. I don't know what the issue was with the last RMA, but manufacturers usually don't restore your files for you.

 

[Puffnstuff]

The one trick I've found with dying drives is that if I place them in a powered external cradle that I'm often able to extract files from them. I don't know if the orientation has anything to do with it but it has worked for me on drives that refused to function mounted in my case. Is the drive making any noises like clicking sounds? My last failure, a wd veloraptor 600gb, died in the cradle when the head crashed onto the platter making a wonderful sound.

 

[sn8ke]

Does S.M.A.R.T report anything wrong with the drive? Either in the BIOS or from within Windows 10.
Not sure how to access it in Win10, sorry.

Mounting the drive from within something like Trinity Rescue Kit might work: www.trinityhome.org
Then you can copy the files to a flash drive or similar.

You can try also cloning the drive either to a file or to another drive and attempt to browse/recover. Sometimes this works, sometimes not. I would suggest using software to clone as those USB/SATA drive cloners from Thermaltake etc aren't the best.

 

[silicon]

I have heard of placing the drive in the freezer for several hours can sometimes revive them lon enough to get the data. This may only be a myth though.

 

[Joepublic2]

I have heard of placing the drive in the freezer for several hours can sometimes revive them lon enough to get the data. This may only be a myth though.

FWIW I've had it work with older hard drives (megabyte to lower gigabyte capacities) but never with a modern device.

 

[desidude]

Hello friends,

Sorry for disappearing. I managed to use some recovery software, a trial version of it, to recover the files I needed. The software was easy to use, but it took me a long time to find one that was affordable and easy to use.

I then returned the HDD to the laptop provider, as it was still under warranty.

I learnt my lesson, and am now going to try to learn more about backup options, so I do not lose the data, and also how to upgrade the drive to a SSD.

I will put another post, but if you have tips on a good backup software to use, please let me know. And also a cloud platform, that will be really helpful.

Thank you very much, I appreciate it.
desidude