Laptop Hard drive repair

I have been given a laptop by a friend which will not boot. I have tried all the normal routes of repair. I have removed the hard drive from the laptop and tried it in a laptop i know works. However this didn't work. I then removed it and used an adapter to connect it via USB, this didn't work either. I am now trying to repair it using a windows install disc and going through the repair function on that but so far I have had very little joy.

My aim is to at least try and retrieve some of the personal files from the hard drive and then format and re install windows. I am very open to any suggestions on an alternative way of doing this.

The laptop is running Windows 7 64bit. Its a 250gb Western Digital hard drive.

 

Welcome to Major Geeks.

If you want to attempt to retrieve files, your best bet is to connect the bad drive to a working computer using an external USB adapter. If the drive isn't too far gone, Windows (on the working PC) should assign it a drive letter (like a USB flash drive).

If this part works, you can dig down to the "Users" folder in Windows and find the data or use a wildcard search on the drive for known file extensions (*.doc, *.jpeg, etc.).

If you get a message you have to reformat it before use, you'll want to play around with some data recovery programs. Honestly, I haven't found one that works that well yet, so I'll leave suggestions on software to more experienced data recovery experts.

If the drive doesn't power up (spin) at all when connected, your chance of data recovery is nil unless you send it to a professional data recovery service ($800 and up).

Hope this helps.

 

I have tried connecting it that way with no joy. the drive spins but says windows cannot access the drive.

No I haven't found any that are very good either. I'll keep trying but it may end up being a new drive and some lost files.

Thanks for the warm welcome btw.