my hard drive broke

[wide]

sunday night, the hard drive in my dell 600m started skipping, and eventually it came to the point that i could barely start up windows. I called dell, and they took my through the usual tech support bs, and they consistently said that my hard drive would not be broken if i could still boot in windows. well, they were wrong. they made me try to reinstall windows BEFORE running system diagnostics, so now my HD has a half-installed version of windows (half installed because i had to skip about half of the windows setup files because they could not be written to the disk).

well, i called them monday evening, and now a replacement hard drive has arrived at my door (i'm partioning and formatting it right now). Now, i have this old, broken HD that needs to go back to dell in 15 days (but i can get an extension). i have been looking at www.drivesavers.com to get my data back, but unfortunately it will cost me 500-950 dollars and 200 dollars if they could not get my data off.

i managed to get my important files off my computer before calling dell (which was a smart move because they messed it up even more by not listening to me when I said the HD was broken). anyway, he was just doing his job. i can't justify paying nearly 1000 dollars to get a drive fixed when i dont really need the stuff on it (i still have all the installation disks, documents, and my music was already backed up).

does anyone have any suggestions on what organization i should use/how i can get the data off myself? i warn that at least half of the data on the drive is corrupted by now.

thanks a bunch,

wide

 

[crazzyeddie]

Just put the drive into the computer yourself and try to copy as much as you can off of it, assuming that it still run at all. Booting off of it will probably not yield good results, so use another boot drive.

 

[wide]

Just put the drive into the computer yourself and try to copy as much as you can off of it, assuming that it still run at all. Booting off of it will probably not yield good results, so use another boot drive.

Okay, how do I do that? I'm 20 percent done with the Windows XP installation, and then I need to install the drivers, but that stuff isn't all too hard. The drive is a Hitachi Travelstar 60 GB 4200 RPM. It has about two inches of gold stuff (gold colored) that connects to the computer, and then four smaller ones stacked 2x2. I don't know how hard to visualize that is, but it's hard to describe also. What cable(s) to I need to do this? thx wide

 

[SilentPanda]

EDIT: Didn't realize it was a laptop... these instructions are for a desktop... so never mind.

-------------------------

I'll attempt to guess at what you're talking about and help you out...

that 2 inches of gold stuff that connects to the computer is where the IDE cable will connect. The cable that is (was) going from your motherboard to that part on the hard drive is called an IDE cable. You can have two devices per IDE cable (on every computer I've worked with anyhow)... Since you have a Dell most likely the cable only has two ends... one that goes to you motherboard and one that goes to your hard drive. However you probably have another one that goes from the motherboard to you CD-Rom or DVD-Rom drive (or burner or whatever). I would recommend unplugging the cable from your optical drive and attaching it to your old hard drive. When you boot you obviously won't have access to a CD-Rom drive but you should be fine.

The smaller ones that are stacked 2x2 are most likely the jumpers. Since you are plugging this hard drive into your second IDE channel and your old hard drive was set as master you should be just fine.

You will also need to plug power into the hard drive. Boot up and copy away if you can. I wouldn't worry so much about mounting the old hard drive inside your computer case and closing it up. Since this will be temporary you should be okay leaving the case open and the hard drive outside of the case (with the wires connected to it). Just sit it on something and don't get static near it and such. I do it this was sometimes for transferring data and have never had a problem... but... maybe I'm not 100% wise either...

In short:

Shut down the computer.
Unplug the cable from the optical drive (the 2-inch long one).
Plug it into the hard drive.
Plug power from the power supply into the hard drive (should be a white plastic end on the cable although sometimes not I suppose).
Turn on computer.
Copy contents that you want. You probably won't have to set anything up so no worries there.
Shutdown.
Reverse to get your optical drive working again.

And don't blame me if things go wrong...

 

[willmg]

Since you have a 600M, which is a laptop, you wont be able to do this without a desktop and adapter or an extrenal case for the drive. You would be best off with an el cheapo USB 2.5 inch extrenal drive casing. then simply finish installing the new drive and install the old one in the extrenal case and plug it into your USB port after startup. Proceed to copy whatever is on the old drive to the new one.

hope this helps a bit

 

[SilentPanda]

Oh! It's a laptop? Scratch everything I said then... you're on your own.

 

[Apple //e]

Okay, how do I do that? I'm 20 percent done with the Windows XP installation, and then I need to install the drivers, but that stuff isn't all too hard. The drive is a Hitachi Travelstar 60 GB 4200 RPM. It has about two inches of gold stuff (gold colored) that connects to the computer, and then four smaller ones stacked 2x2. I don't know how hard to visualize that is, but it's hard to describe also. What cable(s) to I need to do this? thx wide

if you have a desktop you can use an adaptor to connect the laptop drive to an available ide connector on the desktop. you can also use an external enclosure

 

[wide]

ahh, i'm too lazy to do anything involving more than ten minutes' work. thanks four your feedback, though, i really do appreciate it.

this machine is running beautifully with the clean installation of winxp. i wonder how long it will take me to make it slow again...