Bad hard disk - chkdsk made it RAW?

Hello! I have a poorly laptop and I'm hoping you kind, clever people can help a little. Sorry for the tl;dr but I want to give as much detail on what I've already done.

I am trying to fix my girlfriend's laptop, an Acer Aspire 5741 running Windows 7 64bit.

The hard-drive is the obvious issue; it is a 320GB Hitachi SATA 3.0, I think 2.5inch. (If you need any more of the machine/system specs no problem, let me know)

It was "boot-looping", so it would get to the windows logo and then restart. Could not boot into safe-mode, could not boot to last known stable configuration. And yes, you guessed it, neither of us ever made a recovery CD, system image or backed up her data. D'oh.

Anyway, running the system recovery options would produce an "error 0x0" with a conclusion of "bad hard disk". First I assumed the worst, that the HDD had simply snuffed it.

But googling a little on this error, one of the most optimistic results was an old thread on this very forum: http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=253008

The OP had pretty much the same issue I do now, and some great guys helped her salvage her machine! Obviously, their advice was tailored to her and her situation, so my plan was to get as far as I could following their steps and stop when anything didn't look right/achievable.

I got as far as looking at the partitions using diskpart, and was going to go on to trying to use BCD, but something else went horribly wrong before I got the chance...

Running ChkDsk /r seems to have converted the main partition to RAW instead of NTFS :cry

I had already run ChkDsk /r once, and it took about 3 days (!) to finish, and towards the end I got a lot of "promising" messages that looked like it was fixing stuff. I realise how ignorant that sounds, and apologies that I didn't write down what the messages were, but it felt like ChkDsk was doing its job. It completed successfully, and stated that most of the drive was still usable.

Some time after this, I tried running the windows system recovery options stuff again and during the dialogue "Searching for Windows Installations", I got a couple of messages like "The file or directory D:\207192af91a2dcb9c9\1055 is corrupt and unreadable. Please run the ChkDsk utility" and "The file or directory D:\OEM\Hotfix is corrupt...etc"

Windows tricked me!!! I ran ChkDsk again, but this time, I got different messages to last time a lot earier on in the scan. Apologies once again, but I didn't write down these messages either, but it indicated that things were being deleted, replaced or rearranged somehow. Unfortunately this time, the ChkDsk didn't get far in until it failed.

After this, I couldn't even get to the system recovery options....it would just stick on a black screen after F2/F8/F12 options. I have since created a Windows ISO disc that I'm using to boot from, so at least I can still get to the command prompt now.

I looked at the partitions again using diskpart, and now it says that the main D:/ partition is RAW instead of NTFS as it was before! I googled what this meant and whether I could switch back, and it looks to me that I am now screwed, and will have to format the drive just to get it back to being NTFS.

Here is where I concede defeat and look to you chaps to help me out.

Firstly, am I correct in the assumption that I am going to have to format now to solve this RAW problem? Can I format just the partition, or do I have to do the whole hard drive and lose the boot partition too (even though it is damaged anyway)?

Secondly, I have never formatted a disk before so I don't know what comes after. Will I be able to just reinstall windows using my ISO disk & license key, or am I screwed without a recovery CD from ACER? (Those conmen want an extortionate £50 for it..I would rather melt the HD and throw the machine in the bin. I think I would send them the video.)

Currently, I am investigating tools like TestDisk to see if I can salvage any data from the HDD before I wipe it. But advice from the internets trumps any of my plans, so please advise away....and thanks in advance!

 

Since it's a laptop, it would be 2.5"

You may still be able to get the data (pictures, music, etc) from the drive using Recuva.

Chkdsk does nothing of the sort. It cannot format or change the formatting of a drive. There are obviously other problems with the drive.

It looks as if you're going to have to start over from scratch. You "lost" a partition that Acer set up and I don't know which partition (Boot, System, Recovery) it was. You can use MiniTool Partition Wizard (the download link is at the bottom of the page. Burn to CD and boot from it) to completely wipe all partitions on the drive leaving the entire drive unallocated. Then from the Win install DVD choose New and Format. Use the Key from the sticker on the computer.

Once Win 7 is re-installed, enter "recdisc.exe" in Start -> Search field (without the quotes) and select it in the results pane. Have your Win 7 install DVD ready and a blank CD as recdisc will copy files from the install DVD and create a bootable Recovery CD.

By all means, get in the habit of regular backups in case problems arise again.

 

Hi, thanks for your reply. I wanted to try all those things, but I have been waiting for a harddrive enclosure to arrive in the post, it arrived today.

I wanted to plug it into my desktop so I could run the data recovery software (couldn't figure out how to run it from a USB stick...I can mount an ISO but I got lost trying to understand how to make a "bootable" usb stick WITH the software on it too).

Now my problem is that my desktop can't get a fix on the "external" drive! Windows will detect the drive for a second, it will appear in both My Computer and in diskmgmt.msc, but then it disappears again straight after - this repeats.

I can hear/feel the disk whirring in its little case, and the case's LED is flashing - any idea why my desktop keeps losing sight of it? Does that mean the drive is completely dead?

 

The disk appearing and disappearing like that could be a bad USB cable or connection. Try a different port on your desktop and/or a new cable. I've got an external USB connected drive that periodically throws up "this device could perform faster" and disappears. I have to unplug and replug it to get it to show up again. I'm not certain at this point that it's the cable or the USB port because I can't switch ports or cables.

Which data recovery software are you trying to run from a flash drive?

 

I've tried front and back USB ports, all with the same result. I will see if the hardware store sells male-male USB cables tomorrow as I don't have any; though, I think I might actually be more cross if it this new problem is caused by the enclosure I've been waiting for for 3 days than my duff drive.

I downloaded Testdisk first.

Tonight I tried burning Hiren's boot CD ISO to a disc, apparently that has Testdisk and Recuva on it. I booted from this disc and tried to use both, but neither of them could even find the hard drive! (It's definitely still "there" though as I can see it in DISKPART).

Is it possible to skip straight to your advice on formatting the hard drive, then use recovery software after reinstalling windows to get the old files back?

 

The "hardware store" may not have USB cables but RadioShack or Walmart would. It is possible that the enclosure's adaptor circuitry is defective but, the drive would disappear from DISKPART like it has from Windows Explorer.

If you format the drive BEFORE you get the data off of it, you'll lose the data to "normal" access (ie. Windows Explorer) and the data may be overwritten when you re-install Windows. I'm not familiar with Hiren's although I did have ver. 15.2 burned to CD. I just haven't used it because Major Geeks considers it to be warez because of Acronis and some other software titles on the CD that were placed there without authorization from the authors (in fact, I think I may have tossed it).