Hard Drive failure? Is it a total loss?

I have an Inspiron 6400 Windows XP Home 80GB HD, my daughter uses it for homework etc. Yesterday it crashed and when I tried to investigate it booted to a blue screen, unmountable_boot_volume, does it in safe mode also. I ran the Dell Diagnostics and the hard drive failed 3 of the tests, Smart Long Self Test-error 0F00:07FD, Read Test- error 0Foo:0244, and Verify Test 0F00:1A44. I made a KNOPPIX boot disk from a download so I can try and save her data, what do I do next and is there any chance I can save her drive with a windows repair console and ckdisk?:confused

 

If the drive errors on a read test, that's a very bad sign. That means (duh) that it cannot successfully read data, which would make recovering any data difficult. Your best bet is to remove the drive from the PC and hook it up as a secondary drive (or slave) on a healthy PC, or get an enclosure and plug it into a USB port. If you can then read the data, GREAT! If not, all is not lost. You can still try using some data recovery software. Try it as a secondary drive first, if it doesn't work, post here and we'll move on to step 2: data recovery software.
Good luck!
:major

 

All of my computers are laptops which rules out the secondary drive option. I can however try the external USB enclosure, those are fairly cheap. I own System Mechanic Pro 7 which has data recovery as a tool, is there something else you recommend? Lucky I bought the PC with American Express, they will probably replace it but I really want to save the data for her. Thanks

 

Not just yet; I have some programs I could recommend but I'd rather not confuse the situation at this point. If you're familiar with System Mechanic, go ahead and try it. I have personally never used the System Mechanic recovery software so I cannot say how effective it may or may not be. Give it a try and see how it goes. I'd be interested to know how System Mechanic works for you as I'm always on the lookout for quality applications, so post your results with SM7 and if it worked or not. If it does, GREAT! If not, we'll move on and I'll see what I can do. Others here may jump in also and have some ideas for you

 

Update and question, I was able to boot with the KNOPPIX CD I made, and able to get to the C drive, it loaded with a warning that the volume was dirty but did load and I was able to copy her documents to an external drive. Now how do I go about trying to repair the drive or is it a forget it kind of thing? I did locate instructions somewhere involving the XP disk, recovery console, chkdsk /r or the fixboot command, is that correct?

 

Ok I searched around and gather that once a hard drive starts failing like that it is only a matter of time, I got the data and probably can get either a new drive or a replacement with my extended warranty so I guess I'm done. Thanks for the input.