Dying or dead Hard Drive.

My son's PC's Hard Drive failed thursday night. He got it
to work yesterday but it failed this morning and continues
to fail with message "no operation system found". Is
there a way we can get access to the disk and copy
important data files. Its a HP pavillion, about 5 yrs
old. HELP!!!!

"john" wrote:

My son's PC's Hard Drive failed thursday night. He got it
to work yesterday but it failed this morning and continues
to fail with message "no operation system found". Is
there a way we can get access to the disk and copy
important data files. Its a HP pavillion, about 5 yrs
old. HELP!!!!

It is possible that Spinrite from Gibson Research (www.grc.com) might
be able to get the drive running long enough to recover the critical
data.

It can take a long time - I had a customer come to me several years
ago with a similar problem. That hard drive was 4 gb and Spinrite
took 76 hours to process the drive. When it finished I was able to
copy off most of the critical files that the customer needed to a
spare drive. The drive then went into the dumpster,


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

"The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much."

The most effective way to access a faulty drive is to install it as a second
drive in another system. That way drive errors don't interfere with the
operating system, and you can use the system reliably while you are doing
the recovery.
--
Jeff Richards
MS MVP (DTS)
"john" wrote in message
...
My son's PC's Hard Drive failed thursday night. He got it
to work yesterday but it failed this morning and continues
to fail with message "no operation system found". Is
there a way we can get access to the disk and copy
important data files. Its a HP pavillion, about 5 yrs
old. HELP!!!!

If the hard drive is failing, it matters not what PC its located at. If
moved to another PC, the bios may interpret the CHS as different. The
filesystem, and worse, the partitions may not be correct depending on the
bios interpretation. This amounts to mush, even if the hard drive is
working correctly.

Have bare hard drive installed and drive copying software that boots from
floppy or CD standing by. Have a version of your OSes startup disk
available with a file called "sys.com" on it. Copy your current
installation to the bare hard drive. Do not use filesystem based copying
software, use sector based. Once copied, remove the failing hard drive.
Physically install the copied hard drive as master on primary, set the
partition installed as active if not already. Software mentioned will
usually do the active part setting. You may have to "sys" the system boot
files to the hard drive afterwards.
"Jeff Richards" wrote in message
...
The most effective way to access a faulty drive is to install it as a
second
drive in another system. That way drive errors don't interfere with the
operating system, and you can use the system reliably while you are doing
the recovery.
--
Jeff Richards
MS MVP (DTS)
"john" wrote in message
...
My son's PC's Hard Drive failed thursday night. He got it
to work yesterday but it failed this morning and continues
to fail with message "no operation system found". Is
there a way we can get access to the disk and copy
important data files. Its a HP pavillion, about 5 yrs
old. HELP!!!!

If the drive is failing it matters a great deal whether the machine being
used to access it is running properly with a decent operating system that
provides some decent recovery and repair utilities. That can't be done while
still booting from the faulty drive.

If it won't work in the other machine it will be immediately obvious. If it
will work, it is by far the best option.
--
Jeff Richards
MS MVP (DTS)
"Lil' Dave" wrote in message
...
If the hard drive is failing, it matters not what PC its located at. If
moved to another PC, the bios may interpret the CHS as different. The
filesystem, and worse, the partitions may not be correct depending on the
bios interpretation. This amounts to mush, even if the hard drive is
working correctly.

Have bare hard drive installed and drive copying software that boots from
floppy or CD standing by. Have a version of your OSes startup disk
available with a file called "sys.com" on it. Copy your current
installation to the bare hard drive. Do not use filesystem based copying
software, use sector based. Once copied, remove the failing hard drive.
Physically install the copied hard drive as master on primary, set the
partition installed as active if not already. Software mentioned will
usually do the active part setting. You may have to "sys" the system boot
files to the hard drive afterwards.
"Jeff Richards" wrote in message
...
The most effective way to access a faulty drive is to install it as a
second
drive in another system. That way drive errors don't interfere with the
operating system, and you can use the system reliably while you are doing
the recovery.
--
Jeff Richards
MS MVP (DTS)
"john" wrote in message
...
My son's PC's Hard Drive failed thursday night. He got it
to work yesterday but it failed this morning and continues
to fail with message "no operation system found". Is
there a way we can get access to the disk and copy
important data files. Its a HP pavillion, about 5 yrs
old. HELP!!!!

"john" wrote in message
...
My son's PC's Hard Drive failed thursday night. He got it
to work yesterday but it failed this morning and continues
to fail with message "no operation system found". Is
there a way we can get access to the disk and copy
important data files. Its a HP pavillion, about 5 yrs
old. HELP!!!!


get another drive and format it
then slave it into your system

if you keep trying, you may eventually get the defective drive
to work,,,than ASAP copy the data over to the new drive

from a dos box in windows you can use xcopy /s/c/h/r/e/k *.* D:\


some tricks that occasionally work are to cool the defective drive
for a few hours in your freezer...

or else sometimes it may work if you just let it run for a few hours to warm
up
then reboot

i've had about a 20% success rate in recovering data from defective drives