Both hard drives died at once, 1 fixed 1 not recognised
August 14th, 2013
I went out the room for 30 mins and came back to see my computer had restarted and was on startup repair. Both hard drives had both died and got to the same point of loading (before the log in screen), and my dad managed to fix one by reinstalling windows but keeping the files
The other one shows in my computer but nothing is picked up off it, and the reinstall option didn’t work. If anything is done to it, it just says windows can’t access the disk, but as that has all my files on, a format is the last thing I want to do :/
My dad is gonna attempt to recover my user folder and program files off it if he can, but if not, he’s gonna have to install a second windows on the drive, and hopefully will then be able to access the older part which had stuff installed.
The now working drive is over a year old, and the still dead 2tb drive is only around half a year old, so it’s nothing to do with reaching the end of their lifespan or anything
Does anyone know what we could try, and if it’d be dangerous trying to install a secondary windows on the same drive without overwriting everything?
Cheers
JustAnotherGuy replied: Ok so i didn't get any reply from yahoo answers so i'll try my luck here
There is a reason I block
answers.yahoo.com
from my Google search results, lol.
JustAnotherGuy replied: Does anyone know what we could try, and if it'd be dangerous trying to install a secondary windows on the same drive without overwriting everything?
Boot from a live CD to attempt restoration, don’t install over, or you will lose your data.
My dad tried it on the other one, i was having to find out his progress from skype cuz i can’t get back home lol
He reinstalled win 7 on it, and all program files and my user folder were moved into windows.old, I just hope that it will work again :/
Tried using a live linux distro? That might be able to recover your files.
As the the guys above suggested,you can boot from a live cd and back up your files.
Here are a couple of in depth tutorials using ubuntu.
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/use-ubuntu-live-cd-to-backup-files-from-your-dead-windows-computer/
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/17044/move-files-from-a-failing-pc-with-an-ubuntu-live-cd/
Thanks, I found a program last night which could recover files, it’s kinda awkward finding out what it managed to get with me living 2 hours away at uni, but I think my dad recovered what he could and is gonna try reinstall windows today, so hopefully it’ll put my old stuff in windows.old
I would ask him to try ubuntu and stuff but I cba waiting another week when this method has already worked once lol xD
HDD’s can fail at anytime, 5 years or 5 mins, it’s the luck of the draw. Stated lifespan is usually 50,000 hours.
Always use apps like Acronis True Image Home to make regular backups to an external or other internal drive just incase.
As mentioned above, a linux live cd can help to recover files on a HDD that is still functioning physically.
You can always try an over the top (repair install) of Windows once you have recovered data, rather than installing a second version of Windows. (Google for how to do it) – but the best solution would be a fresh install once you have recovered data.
My dad says the recovermyfiles program found a lot of stuff, but it needed to be bought to actually copy them over (lol that’s where this site came in useful ), so I think he’s running that again with a version from here, and hopefully it’ll recover as much stuff as a linux cd would
After, he’s gonna do one of those repair installs you mentioned, then I’m gonna back my stuff up on my old drive, reformat the entire disk and start from scratch i guess, the one plus side being i got a free win 7 professional key ;D
I just don’t think it was a problem to do with the hard drive though, cuz both of them died at once after no previous problems, and i remember the predicted life of the 500gb was 86%, and the 2tb was at 100% :/
HDD’s can be affected by many things – are you using surge protected sockets / UPS , a power surge could have affected them, or your psu could be faulty.
I don’t think i am lol, but as far as i can tell, the actual drives still seem to work cuz the files can be picked up by a recovery thing, it just seems the install of windows died
Don’t suppose theres any way i can retrieve the old registry lol?? ^^