Lenovo laptop won't boot, HDD?

[DanielW]

Well you will just have to see what it does as secondry disk to where ever you plug it into,I would imagine you will be able to access it providing the password is correct.

Buy the 2.5" USB external hardrive case would be a better option as you can plug it into any computer/laptop without going inside the comps.

Did you try a windows7 recovery shot? ie boot up windows cd installtion disc

 

[DanielW]

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/like/1911...ICEP3.0.0-L&ff14=122&viphx=1&ops=true&ff13=80
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/like/1911...ICEP3.0.0-L&ff14=122&viphx=1&ops=true&ff13=80

The above is for a sata drive so be aware of your drive type if your going to buy one of the case types.

 

[Bill Edwards]

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/like/1911...ICEP3.0.0-L&ff14=122&viphx=1&ops=true&ff13=80

The above is for a sata drive so be aware of your drive type if your going to buy one of the case types.

Thanks, with that in mind I'd just removed the HDD to check, it's SATA. But thanks for the heads up, it was only while comparing eBay listings for a sensible price with earliest possible delivery (thurs) that I noticed the two sorts.

 

[gaz1]

Now that is a good idea.

Just one question - the user account is protected by a password. Can I still access the file(s) in the documents folder with the hard drive removed, without having trouble? I don't understand the security side and better than the rest, and am now worrying if keeping it safe from prying eyes could have been a bad decision.

if its a windows password wont make any difference ultimate boot cd has a password renew on it and also uses windows xp which sees many a file even on windows 7 machines

dont want to say much but comes in handy in making a second admin account deleting the old admin password

as goes for hard drive being hardware faults and therefore wont boot the drive theres only so many ways that you can get the info from the hard drive one way i know put hard drive in a freezer bag and freeze the hard drive ive done it once on an 80gb hard drive and it took all day long to get all the info off of it

ive also used this to get info off of hard drives but using another pc computer

http://www.recovermyfiles.com/hard-drive-data-recovery.php

are you getting any of this at all ?

There are a number of warning factors that can alert you to a physical drive failure. These include:

1. Drive shows as "Not Initialized" in Windows Disk Management;
2. Drive not spinning (no power);
3. An excessively hot drive;
4. An abnormal ticking noise whilst the drive is reading data;
5. A loud clicking or grinding noise.

you may see the hard drive in bios dosnt mean that it will boot up in windows disk management

some machines refuse to boot from cd or dvd as throws an error

therefore a usb image of the disk must be created and done through the usb even that plays up sometimes

ultimate boot cd has a script to create a usb image inside of the disk

 

[DanielW]

Yeah just realised hongkong,anyway you should be able to get one from any high street computer shops like pc world or even maplins?

 

[Bill Edwards]

OK, the Ultimate Boot CD has been created and inserted in to the laptop, with no effect.

Good point about PC world. It hurts paying twice the price to get it simply a day sooner, but it looks like that's best. Then when I can't read the drive, I'll have more time to post up on here 'how to open the backup data'... Then start the laborious task of inputting data to remake the file I desperately need.

Cheers everybody, I'll update once I have something to update on.

 

[Windy Miller]

PM me for my address, stick the drive in a Jiffy bag, and send it down to me. I'll take a look at it for you. I do this sort of thing for a living (unfortunately!)

 

[Onoff]

If playing with a Windows PC then I'd create a Zorin OS Live USB - Zorin is based on Ubuntu but made to look like Windows so the environment is much more familiar.

http://zorinos.com/

 

[the snooper]

OK, the Ultimate Boot CD has been created and inserted in to the laptop, with no effect.

Good point about PC world. It hurts paying twice the price to get it simply a day sooner, but it looks like that's best. Then when I can't read the drive, I'll have more time to post up on here 'how to open the backup data'... Then start the laborious task of inputting data to remake the file I desperately need.

Cheers everybody, I'll update once I have something to update on.

Did you change the boot order to optical drive in the bios settings ?

 

[gaz1]

as snooper quoted did your drive spin up to read the disk

if not change the boot order to read from the disk or laptops have the f keys i think f8 or f12 for booting into different boot orders upon starting of the machine

the disk starts up like a proper install from the disk drive using ram memory ubuntu starts the same like most repair disks they all work off ram memory

 

[Bill Edwards]

OK everybody, I've bought a HDD case, plugged it in and it spins up but doesn't seem to exist, according to my computer.

PM me for my address, stick the drive in a Jiffy bag, and send it down to me. I'll take a look at it for you. I do this sort of thing for a living (unfortunately!)

This is a very good offer, PM coming.

 

[gaz1]

sometimes you have to unplug and replug them in until the contacts connect together with the pins not been clean enough on new hard drives or memory cards / graphics card sometimes a rubber is needed just to clean the pins on them with a sata hard drive its not possible therefore doing the above will sometimes do it

 

[Bill Edwards]

Ok, just had a good go at trying that. It's not having it.

 

[gaz1]

query here is yours the seperate plug that comes out with the hard drive case holder or is it within the laptop itself that you slot into

also try going back into bios and look for hard drive info sometimes after going in there and using the + and minus keys you can search and find your hard drive it may not have registered the new hard drive when you plugged it in and booted it up

you do have another install disk to reinstall on the new hard drive dont you ?

 

[the snooper]

query here is yours the seperate plug that comes out with the hard drive case holder or is it within the laptop itself that you slot into

also try going back into bios and look for hard drive info sometimes after going in there and using the + and minus keys you can search and find your hard drive it may not have registered the new hard drive when you plugged it in and booted it up

you do have another install disk to reinstall on the new hard drive dont you ?

the cases are usb and plug and play no bios settings needed

 

[Pete.]

You have to chose those things carefully, I have one here I bought off ebay and it trashed a number of drives before I figured out what was doing it. Wouldn't mind if it either didn't work or did obvious harm but what it did was keep steadily heating up until throughput went down to zero and the drive would invariably then start throwing smart errors. when I buy a replacement it won't be a no-name chinese one. Latest drive to die in it's clutches was half a terabyte

 

[DanielW]

Are you booting the computer into windows and then plugging the external hardrive into the usb?
Does the hardrive have a led? does it flicker when plugged into the usb after windows has booted up fully?

 

[Bill Edwards]

I'm using a caddy connected via usb to another computer. The computer makes a noise when the caddy is plugged in, but when the hdd is inserted nothing changes. The hdd has no LED, the caddy has, it remains on constantly.

 

[DanielW]

If the caddy's led is constanly on then the chances are the hardrive has developed a bad sector/s to begin with in the laptop,only thing to do is leave it to run for about 20 minutes and see if it can get passed that bad sector/s.

 

[Gritineye]

Hi Bill, What a b***er, reading all this with great interest as I've been struggling with the exactly the same problem with my laptop for a week now, combined with loosing my Google two step verification code (which I was advised to do for security) before surrendering my iphone which had failed and getting a free replacement from apple shop. All this happened at the same time. They kept my old phone which was backed up to the laptop (not cloud) so I'm locked out of all my contacts, bookmarks, passwords and much more.

Made a bootable disc of Linux LXLE for older computers as the laptop is around 15 yrs old Vista, but it couldn't see the drive.

Bought a HDD case from PC world but the corrupted drive can't be seen by my old XP PC either, used a data recovery program (www.powerdatarecovery.com MiniTool) to get at 'My Documents' (which it has) in order to recover my passwords/contacts and hopefully find my Google verification number which must be on there somewhere. The free 1 gig of data recovery should be enough I think if I can only find the right file!

I have a backup of 'my documents' on another drive but it's a few weeks before I set up the two step verification for Google.

No doubt I'll get there in the end and it's a steep learning curve but sometimes life seems too short to bother!

Just saying that all is not lost, there are ways and means, it may take some time but you will get there in the end with all the help you're getting, as I'm sure I will too...

Bernard.

PS Gave up on the laptop and I bought myself a MacBook air as a replacement so got an icloud email and everything backed up to icloud including iphone so all this shouldn't happen again, so bye bye windows and Google!