Laptop hard drive locking up computer

[benh4889]

Hey guys

I'm currently working on a laptop that's giving me some trouble. Boots up fine to the splash screen then blue screens. In safe mode same issue

No problem I thought. Tried slaving it in my desktop pc in a hard drive caddie. Just lock up the computer as soon as the defective drive spins up. Take it out and desktop continues to run as normal.

Any ideas on how I can can get the files off the drive, I will just replace the drive but need to get the data off for a client?

Thought maybe booting on a Linux boot cd and trying to copy the data off that way??

All advice is much appreciated.

Thnaks in advance

 

[johnrobert]

You are on the right track give that a try but will probably do the same thing sounds like it has lots of bad sectors
If data is important let someone with experience do it

 

[lcoughey]

How important is your client's data? If it is important, you should first offer them the chance to get the drive assessed by a data recovery professional before further damage is caused.

But here are the steps you need to take.

1. Diagnose the cause of the problem. Are all the heads reading? Is the PCB 100%? Is the drive fully reading the translator from the SA? Absolutely do not run a drive diagnostic program.

2. Resolve any physical issues and stabilize the drive.

3. Get a full sector-by-sector clone of the drive using data recovery hardware imagers or ddrescue

4. Run a file system recovery against the clone

You are always welcome to give me a call (866-750-3169) for advice before you start trying DIY techniques.

Luke

 

[acesdeals]

i had this problem with an ssd, but never a real hard drive

 

[benh4889]

Thanks for all the advice guys. The client is actually a friend of mine, the data inst important enough to warrant paying out a lot of money to have it professionally recovered.

Ill let you know if i manage to recover anything

Ben

 

[brandonkick]

I would be sure to let him know that he needs to be 100% sure that the data isn't important right now before you try to recover it.

Because your attempts greatly increase the chance that a professional service won't be able to recover the data afterwards. So if he is just letting you take a crack at it first, he needs to know that there might not be any second chances.

 

[benh4889]

The laptop was used as a business one, as such everything on it was emails, which we were able to get back from the online server. I made absolutely sure he knew about the possibilities of what could go wrong.

I have however had some luck with it, i followed all your advices you guys gave, i have an image of the drive. But i plugged the drive into my mac and its comes up just fine, all the files are showing and everything, so not sure why it locked up my windows machine