DOA Laptop HDD issues...

[Paintballpsyco2369]

To sum up what got my to this point, laptop was working fine before all this BS started, sat down to sue it one night, all was fine and out of nowhere it started clicking and beeping at me. A few minutes later, my desktop icons went away, then the drive all that info was stored on went away in my explorer window, figured to reboot and got a boot error. As of a short time ago however...

My laptop issues have me totally stumped now! My SATA to USB cable came today, and it tested out fine on a spare HDD. Plugged in the first drive from my laptop, got the expected sounds from it and lack of response on the computer... HOWEVER, upon plugging in my second drive, I got results I absolutely did not expect!!

Drive 2 loaded up no problem, the partition I called "Work" was on that drive, and I had THOUGHT that was it for the drive BUT my C DRIVE THEN ALSO TRIED TO AUTO LOAD IN WINDOWS ON THE TEST MACHINE!!!!!!!! I remember for some reason putting
C partition on the same drive as the partition that held ALL my personal files but apparently I was wrong! Needless to say, I am currently in process of backing up EVERYTHING ON THE WORK PARTITION, I can rebuild C drive, I didn't need anything that was on that drive anyhow. But this situation only begs more questions now, WHY THE HELL WON'T THE LAPTOP BOOT!!!!!!!! C drive seems to be fine, everything is there, No issues at all, but moreso than that, the one drive that should not have failed, did and I am COMPLETELY stumped as to why...

On top of all that now, it is behaving differently than it was inside the computer, It is still making the clicking sound, and the odd beep, but LESS often, and it will spin for a short time with no abnormal noise whatsoever! All research indicates this is a head problem, which still means recovery will be between about $800-$1800 (based on multiple quotes I have gotten thus far) Unless I can find some kind of software.

Damn I wish the warranty covered this... Even more now I hope and pray that they have to replace the laptop with a new model that has RAID support. I don't care anymore, I will take the reduced useable space so I can mirror the drives and once this all gets sorted out, will be doing either weekly, or bi-weekly backups FROM NOW ON!! Still planning on getting the new bigger drive too, will be needing a backup of my external drive as well. Then the big backup drive will be getting a nice new home in a fireproof safe. For now, back to waiting on these 137ish gb's to finish backing up...

Any ideas or input anyone? The DOA drive unfortunately has ALL my reference stuff for my Jeep build, ALL my saved writeups, all my pics and progress pics, all my factory service info and everything is on that drive. Even more than that, it has all my personal files, documents, and other things on it as well... Thanks for ANY help you can provide me on this, I SERIOUSLY do appreciate it.

Paint

 

[87manche]

heat.

much more of it inside a laptop casing.
try sticking it in the freezer, inside a baggy, with your sata/usb cable coming out of the dooor.

edit: this trick will get you maybe 10 minutes if it's the bearings in the drive. Don't dawdle and prioritize what you're backing up, it will only work once

likely the file system is fubar.
If you're other drive is not spinning/the electronics are dead/or the heads have crashed there's no home remedy that will get your data back. It will have to be professionally recovered.

Don't feel bad, everyone loses stuff once, then they learn their lesson and keep important files backed up.

or they don't, and they end up spending 10 grand in 18 months to have data recovered, like one of my not so bright business customers.

 

[Paintballpsyco2369]

heat.

much more of it inside a laptop casing.
try sticking it in the freezer, inside a baggy, with your sata/usb cable coming out of the dooor.

edit: this trick will get you maybe 10 minutes if it's the bearings in the drive. Don't dawdle and prioritize what you're backing up, it will only work once

likely the file system is fubar.
If you're other drive is not spinning/the electronics are dead/or the heads have crashed there's no home remedy that will get your data back. It will have to be professionally recovered.

Don't feel bad, everyone loses stuff once, then they learn their lesson and keep important files backed up.

or they don't, and they end up spending 10 grand in 18 months to have data recovered, like one of my not so bright business customers.

Definitely aware of the heat issue lol. I bought this thing for my 3d classes in college, and with all the rendering I was doing, hell the thing REALLY heated up my room lol. Ran it on a raised pad for better venting, and always had my window open just to try and help cool it all lol.

That may be worth a shot, but my only worry now knowing it is the drive, is damaging it more. I NEED to get about 60% of the data somehow, What I need is only around 60 or so GB's of the drive but I do need all of it.

I am going to run a check on it, see if a tool can find any errors on the drive. The drive with my boot partition is working fine on the desktop I am presently using, dumped all my work drive data without issue, and dumping a few parts of the C partition right now, mainly program files, nothing else I need and even most of them can be rebuilt, mainly just doing that as I have the space and can rebuild my drive with that list of files lol. I am fairly certain it is the heads at this point, there was no warning of precursors as to anything happeneing literally worked fine one night, and the next night it did this. I am just wondering how the drive with the boot partition can be fine, the OTHER drive (non-essential) dead and it is still giving me a "BOOTMGR is missing" error. I have never seen that before in any computer I have ever worked on...

I do feel bad, and will continue to until I get this fixed lol. I should know better. Used to do regular backups of everything and got lax, multiple backups saved my ass in college more times than I can count lol so I feel like a total dumbass for not doing it. And to top it all off, I had a C drive malfunction sometime ago that resulted in me having to reformat, should have started backing up again, but didn't have a big enough external drive. Was in process of dumping the external drive to laptop to organize everything and delete duplicates, then make one good backup of everything, but never got around to finishing that... I guess this is the price I pay for screwing up...

I have gotten a few quotes thus far and they seem to be between $800 and $1800. I definitely can't afford to do that now, so the plan is to buy another identical drive, put that in my laptop, and go throuh the warranty stuff, then put my original drive in the safe till I can afford to recover it. I am kind of tempted to try the freezer thing though lol...

Thanks again for the input,

Paint

 

[87manche]

if you intend to have it professionally recovered don't do anything with it.

the more you dick with it the less likely you will save anything.

it gives a bootmgr error because it's possible you had the boot record on that drive.

you can try a bootrec rebuild, but again, anything you do lessens your chance of recovering data

 

[Paintballpsyco2369]

if you intend to have it professionally recovered don't do anything with it.

the more you dick with it the less likely you will save anything.

it gives a bootmgr error because it's possible you had the boot record on that drive.

you can try a bootrec rebuild, but again, anything you do lessens your chance of recovering data

I am leaning more and more towards that. I REALLY don't want to risk loosing anything on the drive.

That is a DOS command is it not? I wonder why it would store the boot record on the non booting drive...

Looks like I am back to searching for a "replacement" drive to send in the laptop for the warranty... Off to ebay I go!

Paint

 

[superdave]

The freezer trick almost always works, but you do have to be pretty fast getting the data off. Leave it in there for a couple hours before trying to get data. That's what many pros will probably try first anyway. At least I do.

 

[87manche]

since you got a bootmgr error I assumed win7/vista.

yes, bootrec /rebuild is a "dos" command, you can boot the machine to the recovery console and run that from the command prompt.

there are also a few other commands to completely rebuild the boot repository.

 

[Paintballpsyco2369]

The freezer trick almost always works, but you do have to be pretty fast getting the data off. Leave it in there for a couple hours before trying to get data. That's what many pros will probably try first anyway. At least I do.

It may be worth a go, I can dump as fast as the cables will transfer lol.

since you got a bootmgr error I assumed win7/vista.

yes, bootrec /rebuild is a "dos" command, you can boot the machine to the recovery console and run that from the command prompt.

there are also a few other commands to completely rebuild the boot repository.

It is Windows 7 yes, Professional if that makes any difference.

I may give that a go with just the one hard drive in it. Though I would almost rather still send it in lol.

Paint

 

[Bent]

HDD click of death. If a HDD is going to fail it is typically soon after it is put in service; and it is not a rare thing to have happen. SSD < $1 / Gb! On the RMA option I tend to agree with you, depending on the warranty verbiage you could end up with a reconditioned unit.

Heat is a real problem with laptops, especially the Mfgs that vent through the bottom of the case. People don’t give it a thought and block most of the airflow.

 

[Paintballpsyco2369]

HDD click of death. If a HDD is going to fail it is typically soon after it is put in service; and it is not a rare thing to have happen. SSD < $1 / Gb! On the RMA option I tend to agree with you, depending on the warranty verbiage you could end up with a reconditioned unit.

Heat is a real problem with laptops, especially the Mfgs that vent through the bottom of the case. People don’t give it a thought and block most of the airflow.

The odd thing, it hasn't even been 2 years since I got the thing. That is a possibility, I am just wondering how a replacement will extend the warranty at all. This laptop is the first time I have EVER considered getting an extended warranty lol.

This one is an ASUS G73-JW model, and it vents out the back. It has 2 huge cooling fans in it too, and every so often I blow out all the ports and everything with some compressed air form a SCUBA tank to keep them clean. And the "pad" I use is a hard rubber pad that has these raised dots on the bottom. They sit about 3/16" up from the backing, so I put the laptop on that so that it can still breathe better. i guess I just got a bad drive or something in this case.

Paint

 

[87manche]

2 years from a modern lapop HDD is decent.

they usually fail 18 months.

they will not extend the drive warranty on RMA. You get the balance of your original warranty or it gets extended to 90 days if the remaining is less.

You will get a reconditioned drive.

all hard drives are shit. remember that. gone are the days of drives that go 10+ years. in the age of faster/denser/cheaper reliability has lost out.

backups.
multiple backups
backups of those backups.

 

[Paintballpsyco2369]

2 years from a modern lapop HDD is decent.

they usually fail 18 months.

they will not extend the drive warranty on RMA. You get the balance of your original warranty or it gets extended to 90 days if the remaining is less.

You will get a reconditioned drive.

all hard drives are shit. remember that. gone are the days of drives that go 10+ years. in the age of faster/denser/cheaper reliability has lost out.

backups.
multiple backups
backups of those backups.

Holy shit that sucks! lol.

I guess being that I use this thing for rendering, I should be so lucky to have had it this long lol.

I meant on the whole laptop. I did go through and re-read all the warranty stuff again, and it looks like it would be 90 days max, or remainder of the warranty, whichever is longer.

Kind figured on that one, unless they by some miracle replace the whole computer, which would be nice, but I kind of doubt I will be that lucky lol.

I do indeed miss those days. Hell, I have drive that still work to this day that have fallen on me, still work great! And my old compaq laptop I bought for $70 over 7 or 8 years ago is still kicking whereas my $1700 dollar laptop has died on me already lol.

Planning on a weekly-bi-weekly backup schedule now to a big external drive, then a bigger drive to back that up. Second drive will probably be once a month though or something like that. Will figure it out when I get it all setup I suppose...

Thanks again for the info,

Paint

 

[Bent]

backups.
multiple backups
backups of those backups.

If running RAID 0 then repeat steps 1 through 3 stated above; even RE-4s drop dead. With a single or even dual internal drives a couple of those backups should be on removable media even if you have an ISO recovery partition or one on a second internal drive; or both.
:nono: