Me thinks my laptop hard drive crapped out....I'm currently sorking with the Dell support guys to verify. Has anybody had a recent experience and were you able to recover any data from your old drive? Oh and btw, the kids have the flu and my daughters hamster - her most prized possession in the world - including me - appears to be on his last legs...things have gotta be getting better! :cry: Terry
I've had several hd crashes in my day. If you have data (which is all that you worry about) and it has been recently backed up, then it's really simple to just buy a new hd and restore. OK well it's not necessarily simple, but not esp hard either. If you have not backed up any of the data, it may be possible to recover it from the HD. Sometimes the boot sector is trashed and the computer won't boot from the HD, but you can put the HD in working system and read and recover that data. Also sometimes you can use the recovery function of Windows to repair a corrupted windows installation, which can act like failed hd. I'm sure the Dell people will be able to work you through your options though. Assuming that you can understand their Indian/English dialect!! Terry ps..if the data is really valuable there are services that can recover it for you but it costs $$$
it won't boot....not only from the HD, but I can't get it to boot from the CD either. The Dell people have been responsive, but we're still working through it.....English is no problem. Hell they speak the Queen's english better than I do! Nice Limey accent though.... Terry
If it won't boot from either the HD or the CD then you probably didn't have a HD crash. Do you see the usual boot up screen (Dell Logo or something) before it halts? If you don't even get to a boot screen then you have a fundamental hardware problem. That's a real news flash isn't it! Terry
Well......Me and my Dell boys Yuvaraj, Deepak and Banu spent the better part of the day running diagnostics and we've confirmed my fears....HD need to be replaced. Wonder what the chances are I'll be able to save any of the data on them.....btw, also got back the diagnostics on the hamster......my hard drive is in better shape. Not a good day.....better times ahead! Terry
Don't trust Deepak and Banu. I've had those 2 before. I bet that they didn't tell you that they moonlight as parts salesmen for Dell. They get 10 rupees for every HD they induce you into buying. As far as your hamster goes, my condolences. Mouth to mouth resuscitation is not so easy, but if I caught you earlier, I could have loaned you my cat Rusty who would have surely revitalized it's cardiac system. Doc is giving you good advice. You should be able to salvage data, either as a secondary HD or through a kit.
My Dell hard drive crashed when it was only a few months old. I had MOST of my critical data (financial records, most of my digital photos, etc.) backed up. I was a little behind on our troop's Boy Scout advancement records, but had kept paper (remember that stuff) records too, so was able to catch that up. Lost some MP3's and a few things like my golf scores for several months, but when I found out how much it was gonna cost to retrieve the data off of it, I said "forget it". (It's often doable, but costs an arm and a leg). I had "onsite" service contract, so the guy comes down from Cleveland to install the new hard drive...I've reformatted and installed new hard drives before, but remembered how much trouble the original guy had getting my home wireless network set up (he, the trained tech), so I thought I'd better not try it myself...so the guy shows up and says all he can do for me is plop the new drive in, hook it up, boot it with my boot disk, and make sure it's accepting data ok so I can restore everything myself...he leaves whilst Windows is still installing. Sheesh...like I couldn't have done that myself. Now I have an external hard drive hooked in, and back all my data up every night, and back up the whole hard drive once a week (automatically)...still not the ideal system because I could lose both in a house fire, etc...if your data is really important you should have multiple rotating backups...stored off site. Another funny thing that happened was when the first guy came to install my network, he was a nice guy and seemed pretty sharp...was from Eastern Europe somewhere and spoke with an accent. When he had trouble getting the network to set up properly, he had to call Dell Network Service...you should have seen it...he was so pissed when the other guy answered with an obvious Indian accent...I guess he got your buddy Deepak. ("I was hoping I'd get somebody who could speak English")...and the guys with their two different accents couln't understand each other at all...I had to serve as a translator. The guy from India treated him like a novice computer user ..."did you remember to reboot?" type stuff, and he was really getting frustrated...he couldn't seem to get across to the guy that he was a Dell contracted technician and had already done all the basic stuff properly and he just had a few specific questions for the Dell Network people. We never did get everything up and communicating totally right, but it does the stuff I need it to do (can use the laptop all over the house and can print to the network printer from both computers.) Long post...sorry...anyway good luck, Terry, but I suspect your data is gone unless you really want to work (pay) for it. stu :roll:
Just a suggestion. I do what Stu does for onsite backup plus in a belt and suspenders move I signed up for an offsite backup service. They install a little program on your computer and you select the files you want to back up nigthly and it does. I have my financial data, documents and any pictures that I think are not replaceable. When I first started with them they were Connected Data, Iron Mountain bought them out recently. Which is ironic (pun intended) because they are the company that archives my old paper records for me. It costs me less than 20$ month, which I consider money well spent. It backups stuff every night so I don't lose any data. Iron Mtn My best computer tech story is one of the original Dells that I bought, the CD stopped working so I called about it. And even though I knew it was toast they forced me to go through a bunch of stuff to "diagnose" the problem, during the tests it came up that I had upgraded the computer from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95. That brought everything to a halt, they said I would have to restore the computer to Win 3.1 because that was what the drive was designed to work with....steam came out of my ears....they could not fathom that it had been working for about 6 months under Windows 95. Finally we came to an agreement that if I made a boot disk for windows 3.1 and it still couldn't be accessed that I would qulaify for the warranty service and get a new CD rom drive. It booted it still didn't work (big surprise) and i got my new cd. I told him to just send it to me, but he wouldn't do that I had to have a technican come to my office and install it. What a waste!! I don't call tech support any more for anything with regards to hardware, I fix it myself...might cost me some $$ but it's far less agravating. Terry
Geek Squad Rules! <t>Back from the abyss....the darkness of a hard drive crash and living to tell about it.....<br/> <br/> Good news is I've found "The Geek Squad"! I highly recommend these guys.....after talking with Dell support, I took my laptop to these guys to get some independent validation. They confirmed the problem, replaced the hard drive, reinstalled all applications and saved ALL critical data....all for what I thought was a very reasonable price considering the available alternatives. Good stuff.....<br/> <br/> Terry</t>
Had a wierd thing happen to me re the CD Rom drive. Bought a new cd burner. When I went to add or remove programs (window xp) it removed the old cd burner and also my cd rom. Went to restore and of course it resstored not only the cd rom but the the old cd burner as well. Finally went to the device manager and removed the old driver which got rid of the the old burner. Never thought a widows program would trash my cd rom. BTW this new Dell burner will burn a full disk in under 3 minutes.
I just bought a new DVD burner and it's really fast as well. But I think the most important factor in burning stuff is the speed of the processor and the amount of Ram that you have...ie new burner in old computer will not perform as well as same burner in a new more powerfull computer. Terry
BuckT...glad things worked out well, I had wondered about those Geek Squad guys it's glad to get some feedback. Terry