chadap said:
I have Dell Inspiron 6000 - OS: XP Prof, 2 years warrenty expired just
few days back and my laptop is giving me trouble now.
When I start my computer, It says "No boot sector on Internal
Hard drive and " No bootable devices - strike F1 for retry or F12
for setup utility". I have only 2 CDS (application and Drivers
and Utilities) with me that originally came with my computer. I used
Drivers and Utilities CD to diagnose for errors. After 1 hr of
diagnose, i found IDE DISK have error code : 0F00:0244 and OF00:1A44.
UNCORRWECTABLE DATA WEROR OR MEDIA IS WRITE PROTECTED.
Can anyone please suggest me what should I do in order to start my
computer.
I have some important data in it, how can i restore that data? Can I
use thsi hard drive to connect to some other computer and retrive the
data. If so how can I do it?
The things you could have done:
1) Bought an external hard drive, and backed up your data occasionally.
You can remove the drive and try mounting it in a USB enclosure. Since the
drive is 2.5", you'd be looking for a 2.5" enclosure. The enclosure should
have a 44 pin connector inside, to plug to the drive.
The drive could also be connected to a desktop, but you'd need an adapter
to do that. The desktop has 40 pins, the adapter has 44 on one end, and usually
a Molex 1x4 to get power from a desktop disk drive power connector. Connecting
the drive directly to a motherboard, might make certain parts of data recovery
easier. (If, for example, a poorly written data recovery program didn't
work with USB drives.)
*******
(Drive adapter - read the reviews!)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16812203012
(Picture of drive adapter, so you know what they look like. Shop around.
"Small" side is 44 pins. Gold pins are 40 pin desktop. Molex is for +5V
power to the disk drive.)
http://images10.newegg.com/NeweggImage/productimage/12-203-012-02.jpg
Seeing as the Kinamax design is sold so many places, here is another
example, with a different construction. Maybe this one puts +5V on
both pins like it is supposed to.
http://cgi.ebay.com/2-5-Laptop-To-D...daptor-h5_W0QQitemZ200049260298QQcmdZViewItem
Pinout info, showing how both pin 41 and 42 should have +5V:
http://www.silicondragon.com/Docs/Technical/Hardware/HDD/Laptop 44-pin HDD Pinout.htm
The drive could also be SATA, but I don't know anything about those
in a 2.5" form factor.
*******
When you buy a laptop, you want one of two things:
1) Follow the instructions in the manual, to burn yourself a set of
"recovery CDs" or "recovery DVD". That is what you use to put a
new empty hard drive, back in factory condition.
2) Accept the manufacturer's offer to buy a set of CDs. Some CDs are
included with the product (ones you might not care about later), and
the recovery CDs might be purchased for $20 or whatever. The nice thing
about a purchased CD, is the manufacturing quality might be better than
the ones you burn yourself.
Some pre-built computers have a recovery partition, but that is only
effective for as long as the drive is healthy. In other words, useless
in a real emergency, but great for trashing some virus infected OS.
There are software products you can use to attempt data recovery. But
first you have to mount the hard drive somewhere, to try to use them.
Here is a free one, which worked for one other person who discovered
it. Note that it says NTFS coverage is incomplete, so depending on
what defect exists in the data structures on the disk, it may work
or not.
http://www.woundedmoon.org/win32/driverescue19d.html
In an ideal world, a person doing data recovery starts by trying to
copy, sector by sector, the defective disk. Now, sometimes this is
not possible to complete, because the drive gets "stuck" in a
bad spot.
Making a backup is useful, because the data recovery method used,
could destroy the data on the disk. (Even well written software can
do strange or stupid things.) Also, the remaining drive life might be
limited, and you never know how many power cycles remain. (I learned
that lesson the hard way, was tired one night, needed to do data recovery,
turned off the computer, and the drive died the very next day.) Most
of the people I know though, would rush to feed their dying drive,
direct to some program they downloaded, and see what happens.
You'll need somewhere to put the recovered data, so having another
drive big enough to put the results of the recovery, would be a good idea.
The Dell site has a user forum where you can post questions, or
search for solutions other people have used. (Click the "Tech Support (436)"
link to get to the 436 other people having this problem.)
http://search.dell.com/results.aspx?k=UNCORRECTABLE+DATA+ERROR+OR+MEDIA+IS+WRITE+PROTECTED
Good luck,
Paul
