SATA hard drive blue screen can't retieve documents

Ginger__NGinger__N
edited June 2009 in Hardware
Win XP service pack 3, Pentium 4 Dell Dimension E520 SATA drive
My computer would not shut down-turned it off manually-when I tried to reboot-would not finish booting and would go to windows-blue screen error (000...24)-went to utilities and everything scanned ok, but could not get to chkdsk to scan as recommended. I don't know DOS or Command Prompt language but I could get to a black screen that had F:/ and could type after it , but it did not recognize any command prompts (suggested " run chkdsk)at blue screen) like chkdsk/r, or anything else I typed-said it was an invalid command prompt.
SO
went to Best Buy, they said the hard drive was bad, but they could try to retrieve info for 100-150 bucks-INSTEAD-they suggested we take out old drive, buy another hard drive and put it in computer and format and load XP, buy a case for the old one-plug it into USB and try to retrieve info ourselves***cost $175 so far***We did all that and we cannot open anything on the old hard drive from the USB slot, we get a message that it is corrupted and unreadable.
WHAT DO WE DO NOW? :( Ginger

Comments

  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited June 2009
    Hello, Ginger, and welcome to Icrontic. :) I'm glad you chose to seek help here.

    Best Buy did advise you correctly to take that drive out of the PC and install it in an external enclosure. This is an excellent first step in beginning the process of data recovery. Now that you have the drive connected via USB, we have written a guide that will walk you through the steps of data recovery.

    As an easy first step, though, I'd like you to try a free program called Recuva. Download it, install it and point it at your external hard disk and see what it comes up with. Make sure you save any of the information it finds to the new hard drive. :) After you have everything, we can reformat the hard drive and test it to see if it's good for continued use.

    If you have any questions, please let us know.
  • Cliff_ForsterCliff_Forster Icrontian
    edited June 2009
    Thrax wrote:
    Hello, Ginger, and welcome to Icrontic. :) I'm glad you chose to seek help here.

    Best Buy did advise you correctly to take that drive out of the PC and install it in an external enclosure. This is an excellent first step in beginning the process of data recovery. Now that you have the drive connected via USB, we have written a guide that will walk you through the steps of data recovery.

    As an easy first step, though, I'd like you to try a free program called Recuva. Download it, install it and point it at your external hard disk and see what it comes up with. Make sure you save any of the information it finds to the new hard drive. :) After you have everything, we can reformat the hard drive and test it to see if it's good for continued use.

    If you have any questions, please let us know.

    Everything Robert is suggesting is excellent.

    I might add a small detail from dealing with repairs on these Dell machines recently (I did a repair on a pair of E520's a couple months back)

    In one occasion, the owner asked me to do a full reformat, and when I brought the system back up and attached a free agent drive she gave me to load some files from onto the fresh install, it would recognize the drive, but it just would not transfer files properly in my case. Turned out I needed to re install the Intel chipset drivers from Dell's website to restore USB 2.0 functionality and get the drive to transfer files properly.

    Seems unlikely to be your problem given the drives history, and the fact that it does not even seem to recognize it, but being that you did a fresh install to your existing system, it might be worth getting the chipset drivers back up to date just to be sure that USB is behaving as designed before you do some heavier troubleshooting.

    http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/download.aspx?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&releaseid=R132539&SystemID=DIM_PNT_P4_E520&servicetag=&os=WW1&osl=en&deviceid=3268&devlib=0&typecnt=0&vercnt=1&catid=-1&impid=-1&formatcnt=1&libid=27&fileid=176135
  • Ginger__NGinger__N
    edited June 2009
    Thank you for your suggestions Cliff and Thrax.
    I downloaded TestDisk and am now running it. I came up with three green partitions, and typed p to list them, but I might have done the wrong thing...I highlighted c-copy and 'enter' after highlighting something called documents and settings-thinking that might be my documents I was trying to retrieve- and now have been sitting for an hour while something is being copied to my new drive. Was I supposed to back up to the last section and then 'enter' and 'write'? to fix things before trying to copy them? Will it mess up my new hard drive? How do I stop it?
    Ginger
  • Ginger__NGinger__N
    edited June 2009
    Ginger__N wrote:
    Thank you for your suggestions Cliff and Thrax.
    I downloaded TestDisk and am now running it. I came up with three green partitions, and typed p to list them, but I might have done the wrong thing...I highlighted c-copy and 'enter' after highlighting something called documents and settings-thinking that might be my documents I was trying to retrieve- and now have been sitting for an hour while something is being copied to my new drive. Was I supposed to back up to the last section and then 'enter' and 'write'? to fix things before trying to copy them? Will it mess up my new hard drive? How do I stop it?
    Ginger
    ALSO,
    How do I run chkdsk on the old drive in the rocketfish case. How do I reboot (as suggested in the article referenced about TestDisk) the PC?--is that referring to old drive? Do I have to put it back inside the computer?
  • Cliff_ForsterCliff_Forster Icrontian
    edited June 2009
    Ginger__N wrote:
    Thank you for your suggestions Cliff and Thrax.
    I downloaded TestDisk and am now running it. I came up with three green partitions, and typed p to list them, but I might have done the wrong thing...I highlighted c-copy and 'enter' after highlighting something called documents and settings-thinking that might be my documents I was trying to retrieve- and now have been sitting for an hour while something is being copied to my new drive. Was I supposed to back up to the last section and then 'enter' and 'write'? to fix things before trying to copy them? Will it mess up my new hard drive? How do I stop it?
    Ginger

    Looks like you may be getting somewhere, can you see the transfer onto your new drive?
  • Cliff_ForsterCliff_Forster Icrontian
    edited June 2009
    Ginger__N wrote:
    ALSO,
    How do I run chkdsk on the old drive in the rocketfish case. How do I reboot (as suggested in the article referenced about TestDisk) the PC?--is that referring to old drive? Do I have to put it back inside the computer?

    To run chkdsk on XP boot to the Recovery Console and run chkdsk drive letter: /r
  • Ginger__NGinger__N
    edited June 2009
    Thank you Cliff
  • Ginger__NGinger__N
    edited June 2009
    TstDsk did retrieve most of my files to a Temp file on my new hard drive. Most is recoverable and I have saved most docs and my family photos (YEAH!) on #15 - 700 MB CDs. (About 9 hours of work for me---now I know why they charge so much to retrieve info!) I cannot seem to save any of my 10 G's of Music though...but after shutting down my computer with the old drive plugged into a USB, Chkdsk automatically ran on that drive upon startup and I can now see some files on the drive itself. Funny thing though, it won't give me access to my own Documents, just all others. I am the Administrator and I am wondering if I need to play around with it to get around security settings, but no login screen pops up for access. I am still working out all the bugs from installing the new drive and software/updates/drivers. Any suggestions for speeding that up? I really appreciated your comments and encouragement......Thank you! I am clueless when it comes to working in DOS. When I first went to college, The Computer was stored in two large rooms and we all had to learn some basic programing...all the info went onto reel tapes! Technology has sped up so fast and so many things have changed! I worked with the beginnings of the internet and "telecommunicated" with students around the World from my classroom as a new teacher in the late 80's. It took an hour some times to send and recieve data on our little Apples in those days. In the 90's I moved to Oregon and everyone here was on PCs and I forgot all about DOS. I have taught many K-12th grade computer word processing/digital photography/Editing and Microsoft program enrichment classes over the years, but have only learned how the use and teach specific computer applications/programs to the kids. There is so much more to know than there was in the beginnings. It is a relief to have a forum like this to cry for help! Thank you Cliff and Thrax!
    Ginger
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited June 2009
    Ginger, you might try giving that drive another pass with the Recuva program I mentioned to see if it can recover your music. It's a free application, so it's worth a shot.

    As far as the My Documents folder is concerned, you need to take ownership of that folder with the new administrator account you have. Here's how you do it: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/308421

    After that, you can access it normally.

    Again, we're just glad to help, and we hope you stick around!
  • Ginger__NGinger__N
    edited June 2009
    Thank you, Thrax!
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