PLEASE HELP ME!!!!

[Crescent13]

I have a HP pavillion zv5000t notebook. I booted into safe mode, ran my virus scans, schedueld a disk check, and it said one of the files was bad and it was repairing it. Then it said the file could not be replaced because there wasn't enough disk space, although I have 11GB free. It sat there for about 30 minutes, then restarted, and now it says "disk read error, press ctrl+alt+delete to restart, and every time I push it, it says the same thing over again. I can't go into the bios without this message either. I have ALL MY SCHOOLWORK on this laptop, if I lose it, that's this years worth of school just gone. I'm in tears right now, I don't know what my mom will say, I will probably have to do the year of school over again. HELP ME PLEASE!!!!!

EDIT: okay, I can get into the bios now, for some reason.

 

[cheetah26]

Until someone knowledgeable helps , maybe you could call HP tech suppport?

 

[AdamSnow]

Unplug all power to the machine, and unhook the battery. Just to make sure it's dead...

Try powering the machine up now and see what happens... What this does is eliminate the chance that the machine had an error and is only going into suspended mode or something and showing the same thing over and over again...

If you find out that the laptop does have a dead drive - STOP trying to power it up... take it to a computer shop and get them to freeze it for you. They will have a cable that allows them to hook a laptop hard drive into a PC's IDE cable and if the drive is frozen they may be able to get access to the drive for 3-5 minutes...

Before going in, make sure to tell them exactly where your files are so they can go directly to that location and try to copy them over. They will most likely only have one chance at this if the drive is actually bad.

 

[twitchee2]

yes the freezer trick is good but if you keep it cold enough it will go for hours...thats waht ive read i cant say that for my self though good luck to ya.

 

[AdamSnow]

Originally posted by: twitchee2
yes the freezer trick is good but if you keep it cold enough it will go for hours...thats waht ive read i cant say that for my self though good luck to ya.

Not unless your placing it on top of some dry ice or something... Soon as that hard drive starts spinning 5400RPM it starts to heat up pretty quick...

I would go into it knowing that you are going to get about 5 minutes out of the drive... If you get more - bonus... if not - At least you have your data.

 

[Crescent13]

Thx guys. I have the battery out. I'm going to try powering it up now.

EDIT: no change. I guess I should take it to a shop then?

EDIT 2: or should I just put it in my freezer? I only need the backup file (which is on the drive), nothing else.

 

[AdamSnow]

If you are not experienced in this, take it to a shop to get this data back... They do this all the time and will have a much better chance of getting it off for you...

There might not even be anything wrong with the drive... It might just be a bad file that is causing it to not boot... In this case - they can hook it up as a slave on another machine and just navigate your files and copy what ones they need... Then they just need to rebuild your system and you should be good to go...

BUT if the drive does have a problem - they will have the antistatic bags and everything to place the hard drive in to safely place it in the freezer, and they will have the knowledge and expertise to be able to retrieve your data for you...

If you need the file that bad - it will be worth the $30 bench fee they charge you to do this...

 

[Crescent13]

Originally posted by: AdamSnow
If you are not experienced in this, take it to a shop to get this data back... They do this all the time and will have a much better chance of getting it off for you...

There might not even be anything wrong with the drive... It might just be a bad file that is causing it to not boot... In this case - they can hook it up as a slave on another machine and just navigate your files and copy what ones they need... Then they just need to rebuild your system and you should be good to go...

BUT if the drive does have a problem - they will have the antistatic bags and everything to place the hard drive in to safely place it in the freezer, and they will have the knowledge and expertise to be able to retrieve your data for you...

If you need the file that bad - it will be worth the $30 bench fee they charge you to do this...

Thank you!! What kind of shops do this sort of thing?

EDIT: I have a PC shop near me, I rember now, they sell parts and stuff, they should be able to do it. I'll have to call around tommorow. again THANK YOU!!! I might be able to sleep tonight knowing there is some hope for my hard drive.

 

[imported_Nirvana]

http://www.geeksquad.com/

They should have a location near you, and they offer on-site service as well. I'm not completely sure they do data recovery, but they should.

 

[AdamSnow]

Yep... Geek Squad, or any local PC shop that sells/repairs systems should be able to do this for you...

Just please take my advise as to not keep trying to turn the machine on to see if it will work... IF the drive is bad, it could stop spinning all together... you don't want that to happen...

Call the professionals - they should have no problem getting your data back and maybe even fixing your machine for you.

I think in the future you should invest in a USB drive to save your data too just in case something like this ever happens again, or the laptop get stolen or something... Be proactive.

 

[Fresh Daemon]

Data recovery is amazing, they can get data of practically anything. It costs a fortune though for professional jobs. However, I don't think it's that far gone. Unless you smell burning plastic...

Beg, borrow or steal (don't steal) a 44f-40m adapter. I found one on pricegrabber for $3.73. Then plug the drive into your desktop PC. You can't boot from it, but you can boot from your main drive and probably access the bad drive and recover your work, even if the Windows files are damaged.

$3.73 is not much to pay for a year's schoolwork!

And let this be a lesson to you: BACK UP YOUR DATA! I have all my data on DVD-RWs and I cycle through three sets in case anything should happen to any of them. My original work (unrecoverable stuff, not MP3s which can be re-ripped in dire emergency) is also kept in my Gmail and Hotmail accounts.

 

[Crescent13]

W00T!!!! There is a geek squad place right near my house!!! I won't keep trying out the hard drive, and I will start backing up everything from now on. THANK YOU!!!! You don't know how much you have helped me!

 

[Anubis]

yea take it to someone who can do data recovery, seeing as you dont have another comp to stick it in and pull teh data off

however in the future, i recomend getting a HDD and an external USB enclosure and use that for backups, they work great and will last

secondly i recomeng getting a program called "get Data Back" its made by runtimesoft, it is hands down teh best data recover program i have ever used, as long as the drive spins it will get you your data back, you coudl keep it for emergencies like if teh backup drive fails

i just used it to save 120 gigs on a drive the windows decided was not initialized when it was,