Computer problems - whizzkid needed

[Steveyk]

A few weeks ago my laptop simply went off, and wouldn't reboot even in safe mode. Long story short, I've taken the hard drive out and connected it to my new laptop via USB. The problem is it shows up in Device Manager as a hard drive, but under 'Properties' it shows as empty. Windows Explorer will not recognise or display the drive, so I can't transfer my files. I'm not useless as far as computers go, but I think I've reached my limit on this one!

I tried 'naming' the drive, i.e. giving it a letter to see if that worked but no dice. It won't give me the option to give it a letter.

Any suggestions?

[rossm]

What version of Windows are you running? If it is Win7 try clicking on Start, type Administrative into the search box and load up Administrative Tools when it appears in the menu. From here, open up Computer Management and on the left menu, select under Storage -> Disk Management.

What do you get now in the main window pane? Does the USB disk appear and is it recognised as having partitions? You should be able to allocate a drive letter here by right clicking the drive... unless it is fubar'd... If in doubt, post up what you see before selecting anything.

[Steveyk]

it is Windows 7, this is what I'm seeing:



If I right-click on the drive with no letter all I get is a grey box that says Help.

Right-clicking on C gives a whole load of options.

Apologies for the tiny picture!

The top drive with no letter says Healthy (recovery partition)

[Megaman]

Woah be careful what you click in that screen, its easy to wipe things out if your not careful.

If the drive is not initialized then the system will not be able to read any data from it. Normally you need to right click the bottom part of the screen where it shows Disk 1 Unknown etc. Then choose initialise. This writes a small file to the master boot record allowing the OS to talk to it properly.

If when you do this you get an IO error it indicates physical errors on the disk such as a controller failure which is bad news.

If initialize works okay you should then be able to allocate a drive letter and read data from it.

Probably want to do a scandisk or chkdsk /f if it does initialise to see if there are any errors that need fixing first.

Good luck!

[rossm]

Megaman beat me to it and he's right - be careful in here as you could screw up your existing disk in this machine as well.

See if Disk 1 will initialise and keep your fingers crossed! Any errors would suggest the disk or controller are toast.

[Steveyk]

no, it won't initialize. It goes bong and says 'incorrect function'. I'm going to get my biggest hammer and fix it that way.

Is it toast then, or can a computer guy retrieve my stuff?

[Megaman]

Data can normally be recovered but it will cost a bomb from a pro recovery company. I can have a go if you send me the hard drive with a few of our tools but if the controller is dead its unlikely it will be easy to get much off it.

[Steveyk]

Thanks for the offer mega, it's only photos and stuff, I've probably still got most of them on my memory cards. The important thing is I've learned to backup my files!

Thanks for the help guys, if you've ever got a broken boiler, I'll return the favour!