Computer Gurus, I need help!!

[Jim O'Dell]

My wife's computer crashed during the storm. It is on an APC battery back up, and was turned off before the storm hit. It would not boot up this morning. It is an Intel mother board, with an Intel dual core chip. Running XP home. We tried the Restore software, but that didn't help. I got the unit to show something by installing the system disc. It allowed us to reinstall the operating system on drive C (hard drive is divided into 3 "drives"), or at least it went through the motions. At one point there was a screen that said something like "There is no disc in drive" Then listed the 3 partitions, with C highlighted. We went past that. At the end, it said drive C was corrupted.
How can I access the computer and read the other partitions? Can I go back through the set up and load XP on one of the other partitions? Or do I need to start with a new drive, and hope I can recover the information on the other partitions? Sure glad I haven't been in her computer in a while!!! But not being the blame for this may not help if I can't help recover her information. And no, she has not been good about backing up her information. I bet she will be better at that now. Thanks for any insights you can give!!
By the way, I can get model numbers if that will help. The Hard Drive is a Western Digital 80 gig. Jim.

[C Scott McDonald]

Well, as a last ditch effort you can remove the hard drive and install it as a slave in another machine. The other machine will boot off the good drive and can you can look at the failing drive with windows explorer. But if you reloaded the OS you may have lost the information hard telling. With this method you can at least look at all the partitions on the drive and try to recover some files.

You will more then likly have to change the strap on the back of the hard drive to make it a slave. The pin layout should be on the hard drive.

Good Luck! Hard drive fails are the pits. I deal with them on a daily basis.

Scott

[Dennis Peacock]

I've done like Scott just mentioned before and it does work as long as the old drive is still good and the disk partition is still in tact. This is also the reason why I have a 500GB extrnal disk backup unit that backs up our data twice each week. Critical data I backup to DVD as well.

I've lived the pain of loosing info one time too many. It's well worth whatever backup path you pick....but pick one and stick to a weekly schedule.

[John Hain]

First things first. On bootup, go in the system menu by hitting esc or f12 or whatever the screen says.

Go to Boot Order and make sure you're booting to the harddrive first and not the CD/DVD or floppy.

Electrical storms do crazy things to computers.

[Jim O'Dell]

Thanks for the quick responses. Unfortunately, this is the only system in the house on XP. So I'll probably have to buy another drive to reload XP on, then try to recover the info. The good thing is about all that is on C is the operating system. D was set up to be the software programs, and E all the saved files. It hasn't worked 100% that way, but pretty close. Oh, and it's a SATA drive, again the only one in the house.
John, on this one, the screen says to hit F2 to enter setup, but that isn't working at all. It ignores that command and goes on it's merry way. Guess I'll have to make a trip to Fry's this weekend. Guess it's good that the IRS refund is good this year!! Thanks all!!!! I appreciate the help. Jim.

[Stephen Beckham]

Jim,

Have you tried to boot from floppy or CD? Not many of those around anymore, but if you can boot from either and EXIT the install, you might be able to read other partitions if they haven't been corrupted.

Also - I thought WD had pretty good drive controllers on their web sites that might be able to help you with their drive specifics.

Be careful though - they usually don't ask "Are you sure" when you hit a destructive repair sequence...

[Jim Becker]

Fortunately, Jim...hard drives are pretty inexpensive these days...and having a second one in the machine isn't a terrible thing given the growing need to store photos, etc. (But you should also consider a back-up devices, too, while you're at it... )

[Jim O'Dell]

Thanks for the idea steve. I hadn't thought to look at WD's web site.
Jim, I've been pricing drives this am. Weird thing about this drive I have, it's only a year and a half old. But nothing else in the house was damaged electrically, and both our main computers are powered through APC battery backups which is supposed to be a good safety net. If I can get the information off the drive, I'll see what WD will do for warranty. You can't find a drive this small anymore it doesn't seem like. (80GB) And Glenna has a DVD recorder in her computer for backup purposes. Plenty of new recordable discs to use. It's one of those things that didn't get done. Like I said last night, I bet that changes after this!! Thanks again for the help! Jim

[Rick Malloy]

Being the only XP drive in the house does not stop you from connecting to another PC. I bought a USB drive case to recover from a PC after an incident like you mentioned. The cable line took a hit and the spike came in thru the network connection, trashed the motherboard. By putting the drive in an external USB drive case, you can recover from any PC or Laptop that recognizes USB drives and can read the format of the disk. If you can't read the format with whatever you have, go visit a friend with a PC that will and take along the external drive.

[Jim O'Dell]

Thanks Rick. I might price an external housing, but I bet it will be half the price of a new drive, and I've got to have the new drive anyway. Then I can get this one warranted and use it as a back up. Maybe miirror the information so if one goes down, I have the other one for her to fall back on. Jim.

[Curt Harms]

make sure it supports SATA drives. Some support both ATA and SATA. That'd probably be the way to go. Here are some examples:http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...%2Bide&x=0&y=0 If You have the receipt for the APC surge protector/UPS/Whatever, they are supposed to warrant devices attached to them up to several thousand dollars. Might be worth looking into.

[Jim O'Dell]

Yeah, it's up to 25,000 if I remember correctly. But there has to be some determination that it fried because of a surge through the unit. Since nothing else is damaged, I'm thinking the APC had nothing to do with it, and probably the storm had nothing to do with it. Just circumstance.
I was thinking a little this afternoon and remember TLOML complaining that she couldn't do a defrag on C because it didn't have enough memory, and that the message was different every time she tried it, fluctuating up and down. So I think we just missed the signs that the drive was dying. It never got noisey.
I found a 320 GB drive at Best Buy for the same price as Fry's, and a whole lot closer, for the same price, 99.99. Should have done a little more research before heading out, but the BB stop was on a whim, hoping I could save some driving time.
I'll be trying the new drive in the am. I'll post back with what happens. Thankx! Jim.

[M Toupin]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817193022

$26 - USB connection and does both IDE & SATA HDs

When your done with the recover use it for a external backup HD. I take mine to work so I always have a backup off site. Best $26 I ever spent.

Mike

[Jim O'Dell]

Thanks for the link! If nothing else, I might use the old drive for that later on. Jim.

ps..after it has been replaced or repaired by Western Digital!!!!

[Jim O'Dell]

OK, as I get started this morning, I've got a few questions on how to proceed with the new SATA drive install. I'm thinking I need to take the other drive out of the system, install the new drive, and then load XP. After that is up and running, then shut the system down and reinstall the old drive to see if I can read the other partitions. Does that sound like a good plan? When I hook up the old drive, is there going to be a conflict thinking it sees 2 C drives, or will they be renamed automatically? I've read on the Intel site this morning looking for possible answers, but none I could find for this problem. Thanks! Jim.