Dropped Laptop... Windows 7 not booting

Associate
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Somewhere, in a field in cheshire... alright!
Hello everyone,

A mate messaged me saying he'd dropped his Laptop, has not been able to boot into Windows 7 since and would I have a look at it. It landed bottom side down so I guess the HDD would have felt the impact more. Unfortunately he's got music on it that he doesn't have backed up and needs access to it in about 3 weeks time.

Laptop still powers up and displays the Windows Error Recovery screen. Startup repair or normal startup don't complete when run. I can get into BIOS. I've taken the Hard drive out and tried connecting it to my Windows 10 PC. When I connect the drive I get the sound that it's been connected but no hard drive appears.

I'm no expert but is there anything I can try to at least try to save the contents of the drive. It's a Toshiba 320GB HDD about 10 years old I'm told.

I'd appreciate any advice you can offer.

Thank you.

Iggystooge
 
Caporegime
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7 Nov 2004
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Buckinghamshire
Plug it in as you did, fire up test disk and do some reading.

You may get lucky, just don't write anything to the drive yet

I presume you've tried safe mode also
 
Caporegime
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Buckinghamshire
I tried safe mode but the HDD didn't appear. I've downloaded test disk. Do I want to analyse first?

If you quote people they get the notification :p

Yeah I believe so, been an age since I used it.

Eventually you scan the drive, sometimes a deep scan,but at some point it may have an option to List Files, think it's P or L, can't remember but it tells you on the screen

Just don't do anything if it mentions formatting or anything
 
Associate
OP
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Somewhere, in a field in cheshire... alright!
If you quote people they get the notification :p

Yeah I believe so, been an age since I used it.

Eventually you scan the drive, sometimes a deep scan,but at some point it may have an option to List Files, think it's P or L, can't remember but it tells you on the screen

Just don't do anything if it mentions formatting or anything

Right. I'll try it. Thanks.
 
Soldato
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Finland
It's a Toshiba 320GB HDD about 10 years old I'm told.
So likely already some wear from all trhose years and then getting shock from dropping.
Not likely that great chances for getting data out of it with home methods.

I guess at least it wasn't running when having date with Mr. Gravity and Floor.
If it was then it likely has major problems.
 
Associate
OP
Joined
28 Oct 2004
Posts
742
Location
Somewhere, in a field in cheshire... alright!
If you quote people they get the notification :p

Yeah I believe so, been an age since I used it.

Eventually you scan the drive, sometimes a deep scan,but at some point it may have an option to List Files, think it's P or L, can't remember but it tells you on the screen

Just don't do anything if it mentions formatting or anything

Doing a scan but it's just saying read error as far as I can tell.
 
Man of Honour
Joined
19 Oct 2002
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29,508
Location
Surrey
Try booting the PC into a Linux live distro on a USB stick and see whether it can read any files. Linux is great at reading most filesystems and doing it this way reduces dependence on the whole filesystem working. However it does sound like the actual HDD is damaged so it may not help much.

Similar to using clonezilla you can also use Linux to perform a bitwise copy of the data on the drive onto a new drive to preserver what can be read.

Although I've not used them here are some links to various Linux data recorvery tools:

https://www.ubuntupit.com/top-15-linux-data-recovery-tools-the-professionals-choice/
 
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