Recovering data from computer that will not boot up

[jmt356]

My laptop was dropped and now it won’t boot up. I heard some years ago, on another forum, that when this happens it is possible to read the contents of a hard drive even if its corresponding computer will not boot up. I believe this involves taking the hard drive out and putting it into an external device that can be read with a second computer.

Is that true? If so, what is the name of this external device?

[Claude]

True indeed.

I have several USB docking stations that do the trick.

[StuartR]

You need to purchase an external hard drive enclosure. These are inexpensive and can be reused with other drives later. Make sure you get one that supports the size and type of hard drive in your laptop (probably a 2.5" SATA drive if the laptop is fairly new.

Take the drive out of the laptop, mount it in the external enclosure and connect it to another PC using USB or eSATA (depending on the enclosure you bought and the connectors you have on your PC)

[stuck]

Or if your second computer is a desktop machine the quick and dirty route is to open up the case of the desktop PC and connect the laptop HDD to a spare HDD socket on the desktop's motherboard using a suitable cables. One for data, the other for power. As Stuart said the data connection will almost certainly be SATA. There should be a spare power cable coming out of the desktop's power supply unit.

Ken

[jmt356]

You need to purchase an external hard drive enclosure. These are inexpensive and can be reused with other drives later. Make sure you get one that supports the size and type of hard drive in your laptop (probably a 2.5" SATA drive if the laptop is fairly new.

I have an HP G62-a34SE, 320 GB (7200 RPM) Hard Drive Hitachi HTS725032A9A PC3O), purchased in 2010. Would a 2.5" SATA drive fit?

[StuartR]

I have an HP G62-a34SE, 320 GB (7200 RPM) Hard Drive Hitachi HTS725032A9A PC3O), purchased in 2010. Would a 2.5" SATA drive fit?

The hard drive in that laptop is a 2.5" SATA

[jmt356]

I bought the Thermaltake Black Widow SATA HDD USB docking station.

I connected the usb to my computer and inserted the hard drive of another computer into it. I did not connect the eSATA port to my pc because it did not appear to fit any of my computer's ports.

I then turned on the docking station. Windows immediately discovered the external hardware and recognized it. I was browsing through the hard disk when I started receiving several messages. I believe they said I needed to format the hard drive in order for Windows to read it. I tried formatting, but got repeated error messages.

Windows then stopped recognizing the external hard drive. I tried turning on and off the docking station and making sure the usb cord was attached correctly. I tried turning on and off my computer. None of this gave any results.

So does this mean the hard drive is totally dead? I tried listening when I would turn on the docking station, and it sounded like it was spinning and I did not noticed any ticking.

[HansV]

Was the hard disk you tried to format a disk with data that you want to recover? If so, formatting was not a good idea...

[jmt356]

Was the hard disk you tried to format a disk with data that you want to recover? If so, formatting was not a good idea...

Yes.

I believe Windows was asking me to format the drives. I cannot fully remember. But whatever was the case, when I clicked “OK,” Windows returned an immediate error message. In other words, there was no delay while Windows was actually doing something to change the contents of the disk, in my opinion.

Could it be that my laptop does not have an eSATA cable port (or at least not one that I can find)?

[HansV]

According to HP G62-a34SE Notebook PC Product Specifications, the laptop has the following external ports:

1 VGA port
1 HDMI port
1 stereo headphone-out
1 microphone-in
3 USB 2.0 ports
1 RJ45 ethernet port

[jmt356]

I believe none of those is an eSATA port, but in any case, the computer I am trying to read the hard drive on is not the HP G62, it is an HP Pavlion dv6. The HP G62 is the computer that will not boot up and whose hard drive I am trying to read.

I just connected the docking station to another computer (Acer). The driver was automatically installed. A message then popped up from Windows stating "You need to format the disk in drive G: before you can use it." The message appeared for drives E, F, G and H. These same messages appeared yesterday when I connected the docking station to this computer (HP Pavilion dv6), but at that time, it assigned the letters F, G, H and I to them.

So the issue is that Windows prompts the user to format the drive, not that the user is formatting a drive he should not be formatting. In any case, I declined Windows' prompt.

Viewing the hard drive on the other computer (Acer) does not solve the problem because all four drives appear empty.

The problem could be that the hard drive is completely ruined or perhaps that the docking station is not working properly.

[stuck]

You might want to try installing this tool from EaseUS onto the Acer and then using it to see if it can find anything on the HDD from the dropped laptop:
http://www.easeus.com/datarecoverywizar ... ftware.htm

There's some guidance on how to use it here:
http://www.easeus.com/datarecoverywizar ... covery.htm

Ken

[jmt356]

Could the issue be that the HP G62 was purchased in the Middle East and the Black Widow docking station is not designed for hard drives configured according to Middle Eastern specs?

[StuartR]

The most likely cause of all the issues you are seeing is that the hard drive has failed. I hope you had a good backup.

[jmt356]

Hard drives are so delicate and flimsy. A fall one and a half feet from the ground and the whole thing fails, cannot be read from the computer or boot up or be read from a docking station.

[StuartR]

Was this disk drive dropped?

[stuck]

Was this disk drive dropped?

the first post says the laptop was dropped.

jmt386 Have you tried my suggestion about trying the EaseUS data recovery tool? At this stage you've got nothing to lose.

Ken

[jmt356]

The whole computer was dropped. A mere 1.5 feet from the ground and it would no longer boot up. This was an HP G62. Very flimsy hard drive and / or encasement. Already had to replace it twice. This time, the data could not be read from the laptop or from a USB docking station. It is possible that I later further damaged it by trying to force it out of the docking station without realizing that there was an ejection button on the docking station through which it could easily be ejected. But I think it was already damaged. Squeezing on the top and bottom of the hard drive while trying to pull it out may have damaged it further.

Thanks for the suggestion stuck. I took this into the Geek Squad and they told me that the drive was totally gone. They even tried loading Windows from an external cd and could not get it to work. They tried to recover my data but were unsuccessful, so I doubt I will succeed where they failed, even if I used EaseUS data recovery tool.