Think You Have A Dead Hard Drive?

By: Thomas Swaney

So you think that hard drive has finally died? Have you got the
dreaded "Inaccessible Boot Device" or "Unmountable Boot Volume"
message? There are several things that you may be able to do but
one thing not to do is PANIC!! Listed below you will find
several things to try and depending on the value of the data to
you there is always - Data Recovery Services - a costly but
normally effective method of getting the data back from that
expired hard drive. But try these things first:



Windows 2000 or Windows XP

Running CHKDSK



Boot to the Windows 2000 or XP CD and when you see the Welcome
to Setup press the letter R. You will get a DOS prompt. Type
"chkdsk /p" without the quotes and hit enter. Type "fixboot"
without the quotes and hit enter. Type "Y" without the quotes
and hit enter.

Type "exit" without the quotes and hit enter.

The system should now restart and boot into the Windows
operating system. If this doesn't work try the Recovery Console.
Running Recovery Console (*This process will take longer)



Boot to the Windows 2000 or XP CD and when you see the Welcome
to Setup press the letter R (for recovery).

You will get a DOS prompt.

Type "chkdsk /p" without the quotes and hit enter. Type "exit"
without the quotes and hit enter. The system should now restart
and boot into the Windows operating system.



Disconnect the drive power cable and data cable. Reconnect the
cables and try booting again. Try the drive in another computer
that you know works but install it as a slave drive. When you
boot up and go into Windows Explorer you should see an
additional drive. If the drive is there I would copy all of the
important files to the C drive of the computer immediately of
the computer that you are using to test the drive with.

If the drive is not there you can use Hard Disk Drive Recovery
Software or a Hard Disk Drive Recovery Service (NOTE: You should
do your research on the service or software that you use due to
the fact that the service or software could destroy the data on
the drive and you probably only have one chance for data
recovery using either of these methods).

Just a reminder to prevent this problem in the future BACKUP,
BACKUP, BACKUP!!



You can purchase external hard drives that will allow you to
backup your computer automatically at scheduled times every day.
These drives will allow you to restore data from several days
past in the event that you loose or have a hard drive crash. You
should also get a battery backup if you get one of these drives
to be sure that the power doesn't go out while using the drive.
This could cause you to loose the information on the backup
drive due to hard drive corruption.

About the author:
Thomas Swaney

Computer Consultant/Database Designer

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