Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

Question

Possibly fried laptop HDD?

Apr 14, 2012 5:27AM PDT

My laptops HDD just crashed, I am unsure if it is totally fried or not though. It's a 250.00 GB WD HDD with no partitions. I tried turning it on a few days ago, it goes through the BIOS load up then just says, "Operating System Not Found" I have a recovery disk for the computer but I would like to be able to pull the data off it first before I completely reformat the drive (assuming I'm even able to). I pulled the drive out and have attached it to my external drive case and plugged it into my working computer. The drive spins up, but then usually stops after <1 min. When I go to my computer > Manage > Storage > Disk Management the HDD spins up again and I am able to see the hard drive but says I need to initialize with either MBR or GPT. I try both and every time it says Data Error (Cyclic Redundancy Check)

I guess my question is, is there anything I can do to recover data or am I going to just need to buy a new drive? If any more information is needed let me know.

Regards
Mike

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
Answer
If the drive won't show when in an external case
Apr 14, 2012 5:56AM PDT

either, it doesn't sound good and more like a job for data recovery professionals if you really need your files. At some point, the more you do to try to fix it, the harder it may become for even professionals to do the work. It's possible that just the controller board is bad and that finding an exact replacement from another old drive would help out but finding such a drive might not be easy. Sorry but wish the solutions were easier.

- Collapse -
Thanks
Apr 14, 2012 6:05AM PDT

Its alright, appreciate the advice. It'd definitely going to be too hard to find an exact match for this, but thanks anyways!