karen2205 | Computers

My laptop now seems to have given up completely. Last night it started making weird whirring and clicky noises, then blue screened (which is normal) and then I got a different blue screen saying 'unable to write to disk C'. Let it whirr/click away for a while, then realised that it wasn't going to fix itself, so turned it off and left it till the morning (in case the weird noises were caused by over heating). Tried to turn it on this morning and got the same weird noise combined with it being unable to find the operating system.

Bollocks. I've been intending to buy a new computer for ages, but I'd not anticipated it breaking quite like this. Unless there's some way to get it working again I'm going to have to recreate the pay data from April onwards and I'm going to have to have the payroll software on my new machine which I really don't want.

And this is ignoring the inconvenience of losing my email archive/other documents from January 2003 to date.

Anyone got any suggestions of things I could try to get it working?

For the forseeable future this means I'll only have internet access at work.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Sounds like the HDD has died, mine did this. You can pay to have some recover the data from the HDD (I think Timwi did this, you may want to ask him) - but it is a bit expensive, but the only way you're going to recover the data unfortunately.

PS: This is why I backup obsessively now. I don't trust my computers any more!

Buy a new disk. It won't help you recover the data, but it's cheaper than buying a new laptop.

You may be able to get data off the disk, but I'm not a specialist in that sort of thing. I understand putting it in the freezer (the disk, not the whole system) may help.

Before you start thinking about buying a new HD, consider a reinstall of the OS. Which version of Windows is it running, and how old is the install? Windows has this annoying habit of degrading over time; it's what happened with my laptop after about 3 years. You can coax it out for a while with a recovery disk and use of chkdsk /p for a while (I kept mine going for a whole year like that), but eventually you'll just have to reinstall - at which point suddenly it's all running absolutely fine again, whereas just before the reinstall you would have sworn the hard drive was on its last legs and dying!

If you're running XP but don't have disks, I have a recovery CD you're welcome to try. Even if you don't have the disks to do a fresh reinstall, it should enable you to get the laptop working again so you can get the data off; I have a W2K install disk you could use so you'd still have a Windows system to enable you to reinstall the payroll software (which I'm presuming you have the disks to hand for).

"Unable to write to drive C" is exactly what it is though, and any attempt at reinstall is only going to further ruin any chances of recovery of data (as slim as they sound at this point), *especially* with a whirr-click noise. Before you do *anything* else (including turning the computer on again), you'll probably want to talk to some data recovery people.

Whirr-click noises are an extremely bad sign, and should be immediately met with a full backup of all your data. Although it's probably too late in this case, if the time/effort are worth a significant amount of money to you, you'll want to look into data recovery options: however, this is not going to be cheap. (Think along the line of thousands of USD, and you'll probably be in the right ballpark.) So it depends how much your work is worth to you.

G'luck.

I'd disagree. My laptop behaved exactly this way, right down to the noises, error message and then failing to find the OS. I put on a clean install of Ubuntu and it works perfectly now.

May be worth booting off CD, say knoppix or one of the fix-your-computer linux toolkits and see if you can see the drive.

You've got a mechanical failure in the hard drive. Don't try to power the machine up again with that hard drive in; it's not going to work properly again, and you'll reduce the chances of recovering data.

The rest of the laptop is almost certainly fine, just in need of a new drive. A new laptop hard drive will cost you about £40-50.

If there's stuff on there which is very valuable to you, there are people who can physically disassemble the drive and attempt to recover data from the platters. This has to be done in a clean room, and is expensive - to the tune of hundreds, probably. I used Vogon to do this once.

If you can't afford that, there are freaks like me who have done amateur data recovery jobs. As

skibbley suggests, cooling the drive can often unjam things because of the different contraction/expansion rates of parts of the meachanism with temperature. To do this properly you have to cool the drive whilst keeping it dry - in a sealed box with a pack of silica gel is the best way - then start it from cold in a setup ready to back it up if it works.

Let me know if I can help in any way.

I'm thinking amateur data recovery might be the best bet - there's nothing on there that's so valuable that I'm willing to pay hundres of pounds to retrieve it (I've got sufficient paperwork that I can recreate the payroll without too much trouble). So when are you likely to be in London next?

I'm in London now, actually - bit of a flying visit. :-)

If you'd like me to take it and see what I can do with it, I could possibly meet you tomorrow somewhere. I'm leaving on the sleeper train.

That'd be great - when/where is good for meeting you - presumably Kings Cross station in the evening so you're not carrying it around for too long?

Euston, actually - sleeper leaves at 23:23, so I'd probably be aiming to be there at 23:00. But earlier in the evening and elsewhere would be fine, as I've not currently got plans past late afternoon.

Tried to leave you a voicemail message a while ago - guess you've not got it. I'm at home and not doing anything much right now so let me know when/where - it'll take me about half an hour to get into central London.

When my laptop told me it couldn't find the OS when I was in 7th grade, it was an indication that the hard drive had fallen out (which it was prone to doing). But since it wasn't in the machine, I didn't get the whirr-clicks... :\

Good luck with whatever you end up having to do.

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