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Hard drive failure, need help.

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6 replies

by quazal

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My Hard drive has a bad sector somewhere in its boot sector so now I am unable to boot, format or get anything off of it. I would like to see if I can save some information on it before I am able to get a new hdd. Is there any way to boot the computer to the old xp install I have on it from a usb flash drive? I dont want to boot a new install but the old one just bypassing the bad sectors in the hdd.

Thanks

6 replies

by computercookie

Get your new hdd and once installed and OS loaded, connect old hdd as a slave drive.

Make sure you create same accounts and passwords, copy data required. If you have access problems create a relevant post!

by zlitocook

How do you know it has a bad sector and can the BIOS see the drive? If the BIOS can not see the drive it is most likely gone if it can see it you may have a chance at getting your data.
Did you have an up to date antivirus program and run it often? There are boot sector viruses that can make it look like a drive is bad.
You can do install a new drive and slave your old one but if the old drive is not found try a live CD like Bart?s PE or Kloppix. Boot to the CD and look to see if it finds your old drive.
If so you can move data from it to the new drive. Have you tried to boot to a Win98 disk and use the format /mbr to see if that would fix the problem?
Can you boot in to safe mode or run a repair with the XP CD?
You did not say but is this a XP install or Vista?
Please let me know, I love a good challenge.

by quazal

Antivirus was up to date and ran every other day a full scan.

The BIOS still sees it as a valid drive, when i try to do a normal boot/boot to safe mode/repair with the cd/or even a format with a cd it sticks trying to load at a certain place. all the hardware scans that I have done show up as an error code 7 on the hdd.

It is an xp pro machine with sp2.

I am either looking to figure out a way to boot the machine off of a flash drive or find some way to temp repair the bad sector. Mainly because I am limited on funds and it will take some time to actually replace the drive.

I have yet to try using a boot cd(no blank cds to burn one) and the computer has no floppy drive.

by older mycroft

Download the iso and burn it to CD.

Then boot from it.

Among the myriad of toolkit options, you can run chkdsk and scandisk from the OS on the CD.

There's an above average chance of you fixing the bad sector on the HDD.

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

by zlitocook

If your BIOS supports it, look to the BIOS to see. Your best bet is with a CD ROM boot and a live CD, you can buy a 100 stack of CD's for vary little if you watch the sale adds.
I have learned that if you buy when you have a few bucks it will pay off when you need it.
If you want a bootable flash drive you will need a large drive, 1 gig or more. To store programs and install files.
You can look on Crags list or Ebay for cheap drives,it does not hurt to have one or two extra drives handy in case of problems.

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