Laptop HD woes

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mattsccm

Well-Known Member
The consensus of opinion is that my laptop HD is screwed. Can't read it with a USB caddy. I am sure that some one out there could sort it at more than the price for a new one so stuff that.

Now can I just buy a new HD, bung it in and reload windows?
 

rusky

CC Addict
Location
Hove
Yup, that should work :thumbsup:
 
The consensus of opinion is that my laptop HD is screwed. Can't read it with a USB caddy. I am sure that some one out there could sort it at more than the price for a new one so stuff that.

Now can I just buy a new HD, bung it in and reload windows?

Edit: if you want to recover data...
Do what I did - get Linux on a memory stick, and boot using that. Run TestDisk and see if it can help.
Are you using Win7 with a failed 'recovery'?

else, yes, that's the idea.
 
OP
OP
M

mattsccm

Well-Known Member
Dunno what happened. Can't boot past safe mode screen and even then can't select anything. Tried Hd in caddy but got can't read message. Prepared to start all over again if it get the laptop running. Can I take the opportunity to boost HD. eg from 40gb to 80? Was runningxp so planning on doing the same unless I am recommended to do something else.

7 would be nice but no big deal
 
Dunno what happened. Can't boot past safe mode screen and even then can't select anything. Tried Hd in caddy but got can't read message. Prepared to start all over again if it get the laptop running. Can I take the opportunity to boost HD. eg from 40gb to 80? Was runningxp so planning on doing the same unless I am recommended to do something else.

7 would be nice but no big deal

If you can't read it in a caddy then it looks like its a start from scratch operation. Yes, you can increase the HD size when you do the swap and with the price of HDs these days I would tend to go for more than you think you will need. My recollection from having done it some time ago is it can be a right pain starting with a completely blank hard drive but I unfortunately can't remember the steps I finally worked out to get to where I could re-install Windows.

If you haven't got one, now might be the time to think about having a backup regime in place. These days I tend to back up by just cloning the HD and then if anything goes wrong I can just swap them over.
 
Have you tried booting with the windows disk in the DVD drive? (and making sure that your PC is set to look at the DVD drive before the HDD).
No problems with increasing HDD size.

My recollection is that there were two issues. One is the new disk had to be formatted and using the DVD drive required software drivers for the DVD drive (ditto USB) so I had to get an OS going with drivers before I could install Windows from the DVD drive. But it was a few years ago and my memory of other than the pain is cloudy.
 

Angelfishsolo

A Velocipedian
Ig you can get it to boot at all the the HD is not dead. You should be able to recover data from it and possibly even reload windows onto it. Sometimes something like a fdisk /mbr command from the installation disk recovery option is enough. (Think it is fix mbr nowadays). Anyway I don't think all is lost.
 
Ig you can get it to boot at all the the HD is not dead. You should be able to recover data from it and possibly even reload windows onto it. Sometimes something like a fdisk /mbr command from the installation disk recovery option is enough. (Think it is fix mbr nowadays). Anyway I don't think all is lost.

It might be stuffed anyway if there are bad sectors in the master boot record, but should be able to recover some data off it (just managed it for a friend).
 
Can you no longer re-write MBR's then? I have been out of the game for sometime I admit.

I think you can, but there's a difference between a hardware broken bit and a software one. Not sure how Windows appreciates bad bits in its boot sector.
From recent experience with a very unhappy windows, which wouldn't boot off a recovery dvd even after the partition had been Shredded by Linux (intentionally).
 

Angelfishsolo

A Velocipedian
I think you can, but there's a difference between a hardware broken bit and a software one. Not sure how Windows appreciates bad bits in its boot sector.
From recent experience with a very unhappy windows, which wouldn't boot off a recovery dvd even after the partition had been Shredded by Linux (intentionally).

I agree that a hardware failure is more serious. From the OP's post it sounded like a software problem. That said as we can't hear the disk it is very hard to know for sure.
 
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