Bad Hard Drive

[Guest]

I may be in over my head here...my hard drive crashed several weeks ago, and
I replaced it with a new one. I had done some backup but not total. Now, I
want to see if I can repair my bad drive using software or what = I have
installed it in a second computer - an old Compaq 2286. I have increased the
ram to 256 mb. When I turn the computer on, I see on the screen "Operating
system not found."

Any help would be appreciated

 

[DL]

You should connect the drive as a slave to a functioning PC and see if you
can access it.
Your drive manufacturers site will likely have a free testing utility, if
that reports the hd as failed, bin it

 

[Malke]

I may be in over my head here...my hard drive crashed several weeks ago, and
I replaced it with a new one. I had done some backup but not total. Now, I
want to see if I can repair my bad drive using software or what = I have
installed it in a second computer - an old Compaq 2286. I have increased the
ram to 256 mb. When I turn the computer on, I see on the screen "Operating
system not found."

Any help would be appreciated

Some people have had success using SpinRite. It depends on what is wrong
with the drive. If it is mechanical failure, then you can't fix it.
You'd need to send the drive to a professional data recovery company
like Drive Savers (my preference) or Seagate Data Recovery. General
prices run from $500USD on up. Drive Savers recovered all the data on a
failed laptop drive for one of my clients and it cost $2,700. He thought
it was worth the money; only you know what your data is worth. I
understand that some insurance companies are now covering data recovery
charges so check with yours.

Drive Savers - http://www.drivesavers.com
Seagate Data Recovery Services - https://www.seagatedatarecovery.com/


Malke

 

[Tim Slattery]

I may be in over my head here...my hard drive crashed several weeks ago, and
I replaced it with a new one. I had done some backup but not total. Now, I
want to see if I can repair my bad drive using software or what

Depends on what you mean by "crashed". If the drive has a hardware
problem, you're not likely to be able to rescue it.

= I have
installed it in a second computer - an old Compaq 2286. I have increased the
ram to 256 mb.

Not really enough to run XP, but you probably know that.

When I turn the computer on, I see on the screen "Operating
system not found."

So the BIOS can see the HD anyway. But the implication is that it
can't read it - or at least can't read the bits that should point it
to the OS.

Another poster suggested that you connect this HD to this computer as
an extra disk, not as your boot disk. If you've already done this and
are getting this message, then your boot disk is messed up, and you
still don't know anything about your crashed disk.

I've used this tool
(http://www.newertech.com/images/hr/NWTU2NVSPATA.pdf) to read disks.
It allows you to read any 2.5 inch or 3.5 inch EIDE or SATA disk via a
USB port. If the drive is functional, this will let you get to it
easily. If it's non-functional, there are data recovery services that
can retrieve the data, as long as it's actually there. Those services
tend to be quite expensive.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I may be in over my head here...my hard drive crashed several weeks ago, and
I replaced it with a new one. I had done some backup but not total. Now, I
want to see if I can repair my bad drive using software or what = I have
installed it in a second computer - an old Compaq 2286. I have increased the
ram to 256 mb. When I turn the computer on, I see on the screen "Operating
system not found."

If the drive literally crashed, you shouldn't expect to find an
operating system, or anything else on it. The hardware has failed. You
can't read it and you can't repair it.

If the problem was actually somewhat less than a crash, depending on
what is wrong, you may or may not be able to fix it. However, you
should not expect the drive to boot in a different computer. Almost
always you need to at least a repair installation in that
circumstance. Sometime the repair installation isn't sufficient and
you need a clean reinstallation.

 

[WarOfMars]

It may also be that your main partition where your operating system is
loaded is corrupted. So what you can do is to attach your hard drive
as slave on different computer use a third party tool to recover your
data. If the crash is logical then software like Stellar Phoenix
Windows Data Recovery Software is going to help you out. Stellar
Phoenix provides file and partition recovery from FAT 16, FAT 32, NTFS
& NTFS5 file system. Download the demo to try :
http://www.stellarinfo.com/partition-recovery.htm
If your hard drive has suffered mechanical failure then data recovery
service company will help you.