[Thad E Ginathom]

Originally Posted by bharatbits

The data on it is very critical for me.

So you take backups every day. Right? Right?

What should be my next steps?

1. Back up the disk. Two copies on separate external hard disks.

2. Take the laptop to a good service engineer for advice. HDDs do make noises, especially when they spin up: you might have nothing to worry about. But clicks... have heard them a couple of times and it didn't end well either time.

... but you might. Don't risk it. Get advice from your engineer about the possibility of imaging the disk so that you don't have to re-install and restore everything on a new disk.

You say this is also your work machine? Self-employed? Or you have IT staff that can help? If so they should be doing.

And just to double, triple, stress this (and I have been caught out myself), even for a personal machine you should backups: for a professional machine, every day is not too often.

[bharatbits]

Originally Posted by Thad E Ginathom

And just to double, triple, stress this (and I have been caught out myself), even for a personal machine you should backups: for a professional machine, every day is not too often.

Thank you. Appreciate the quick response. No, i haven't been taking backups. I am self employed. I will get it checked immediately.

I think just like our car tyres, HDDs also have a life. I recently, changed tyres on my car at 4 years, 50000kms. The tyres would have lasted more. But, i don't know how much - 200kms, 5000kms or maybe 10000kms. But, we change them reasonably before hand so we don't have unexpected breakdowns. Should we be doing something like that for HDDs too and change them once every 5 years rather than waiting for them to fail? If yes, what would be a rational timeframe? Something like preventive maintenance. End of the day a hard disk is made of mechanical components which move very fast and are bound to fail at some point of time.

[roamer012]

Originally Posted by bharatbits

Folks, i have a query. *My hard disk has not yet crashed*
Is there a way i can check for the health of my hard disk? I am not really a very tech guy.

Lenovo Core i3 laptop purchased in 2017. 8GB RAM, 64 bit OS Windows, 1 TB harddisk.

What should be my next steps?

There are several software (I am guessing you have already gone thru CHKDSK routine) and if i am not wrong even windows has one called SMARTS however any such tests involve stress testing components and thus i would advise against it until a backup is in place. For rest other steps, Mr. Thad has given an elaborate and accurate response.

[Thad E Ginathom]

Originally Posted by bharatbits

I think just like our car tyres, HDDs also have a life. ... ... Should we be doing something like that for HDDs too and change them once every 5 years rather than waiting for them to fail?

You should expect your hdd to fail from the day that you buy it! For me, to have lost data from a hdd failure was especially embarrassing, as this stuff was part of my job. I lost a couple of months. Saddest thing was new-car delivery pics. It was not a disaster but I still can't forgive myself.

There are tested and published mean time between failure figures. There's a site somewhere (perhaps more than one) that tracks HDD reliability. But I do not think we can accurately measure it in years, or even working hours, as it will depend on usage pattern. I suspect a disk is stressed more by starting/stopping than by running. My impression is that disk failures I have known (and not loved ) are discovered when restarting a machine. Especially on servers that have been running for months, or even a year or two: was always nervous when I had to restart. That is when you find out what was about to break.

Laptop hdds are probably more stressed, both by movement and by higher temperatures in a small space. Especially as people tend to think the name is true, and block ventilation spaces by using them on their lap top!

[audioholic]

Originally Posted by AtheK

Any good data recovery guys in bangalore, i have some photos that i need recovered form a HDD, the HDD does get detected once a while, but not able to access folders.

Also any idea what is the general cost for recovering data.

Two companies which I encountered while I searched hard for data recovery after a completely dead hard drive - 1. Stellar(https://g.page/stellar-bengaluru?share) and 2. Data Storage solutions(https://g.page/data-storage-solutions?share) While the former is very reputed and equally expensive, I used services of Data Storage solutions and it was a pleasant experience. Regarding pricing, I am afraid we have to go by their diagnosis and it depends solely on what the company thinks the issue is and the price is quoted based on that. You can give a try and get a quote and then decide if it sounds good or you want to take a second opinion.

[vigsom]

My 6 year old sparingly used Acer V5-471 laptop running on Windows 8.1 threw up an error one morning after working flawlessly till the previous evening.

1.On starting up, the screen started up with the Acer logo, then after a few minutes came this message at the bottom about Preparing Automatic Repair



and then, after a few minutes, the blue screen with error code 185



2. On selecting F8, after a few minutes another blue screen appeared although this time the error code was 14c



3. Gave the machine to a software engineer and he has been trying to read the hard drive on his laptop but with no success. The drive is seen on MyComputer but click on it and it doesn't open. The blue light on the drive is seen.

Questions

1. I have some important data on this drive. Is recovery possible? If yes, what is the best way to go about this?

2. I intend to get the machine started by putting a new SSD and getting Windows installed .Is this the right way forward?

[mithun]

Originally Posted by vigsom

My 6 year old sparingly used Acer V5-471 laptop running on Windows 8.1 threw up an error one morning after working flawlessly till the previous evening.

Questions

1. I have some important data on this drive. Is recovery possible? If yes, what is the best way to go about this?

2. I intend to get the machine started by putting a new SSD and getting Windows installed .Is this the right way forward?

Try any of these:

1. Use a Ubuntu Live CD to copy files to a safe source
2. Try https://www.system-rescue.org/
3. If you want a Windows based solution, try Stellar Data Recovery for Windows

[vigsom]

^^ Update on the issue.

I got a new SSD, got Windows 10 and other programs installed.

The machine is now up and running and its response is very quick compared to what it was all these years.

A new problem - I got the machine back from the engineer and a few keys viz. CapsLock, a s d f g h ; z x c n m , . / and the left side ctrl alt don't work. This is all I can type



Surprisingly they all worked when he installed the programs and even typed my name out as the name of the computer.

I tried the following but was of no use :

1. Cleaned the keyboard out - actually the dust trapped was more on the keys that were working and less on the ones that weren't

What is that OHP slide kind of material in the keyboard? Is that the medium to transfer key strokes to the data cable?





2.cleaned the data cable connection on the motherboard.

3.used the opportunity to inspect the motherboard for cleanliness and cleaned out the little dust there was.



I'm thinking of going with a USB keyboard since this laptop is technically used like a desktop.

The old hard drive isn't reading - used an enclosure and plugged it into a functional laptop and the blue light glows, I can feel the disk working, the red light flickers for a while but that's just about it.



Any ideas on whether this drive can be repaired to just read the data on the disk?

[R2D2]

Originally Posted by vigsom

What is that OHP slide kind of material in the keyboard? Is that the medium to transfer key strokes to the data cable?

That material is an insulation cover + protects the laptop internals from getting damaged by any accidental small liquid spills on the KB + dust.

The old hard drive isn't reading - used an enclosure and plugged it into a functional laptop and the blue light glows, I can feel the disk working, the red light flickers for a while but that's just about it. Any ideas on whether this drive can be repaired to just read the data on the disk?

If the drive spins up have you tried checking the partition? It could be damaged, start up the Disk Management plug in and check if the drive is recognized, if not there may be other issues with the drive including hardware failure/damage on the drive's controller board. In that case you will need to hand the drive over to a professional data recovery agency. But be prepared for a hefty bill. As mentioned many times before on this thread it is very, very important to backup your critical data.

[JMaruru]

During a support call with Microsoft, for account profile change, rather than modifying existing windows user account, inadvertently account got deleted, and also the accompanying user data.

Is there a way, to recover the deleted user data? OS is Win10 on Dell Inspiron laptop. Please advise!

[girishv]

Originally Posted by JMaruru

During a support call with Microsoft, for account profile change, rather than modifying existing windows user account, inadvertently account got deleted, and also the accompanying user data.

Is there a way, to recover the deleted user data? OS is Win10 on Dell Inspiron laptop. Please advise!

Do not write or do anything with the hard disk.
Download any Linux ISO (suggest mint/ububtu) , make a bootable USB and boot into Linux.

Install testdisk. If you are using any debian system like Ubuntu, mint etc
$ sudo apt-get install testdisk

Use the photorec tool available with testdisk to recover data.

I have saved a complete PhD work using this and I'm sure you can get all your files with this tool.

- Girish

[JMaruru]

Originally Posted by girishv

Do not write or do anything with the hard disk.
Download any Linux ISO (suggest mint/ububtu) , make a bootable USB and boot into Linux.

Thank You! But am NOT so savvy on Linux and unsure whether I can pull this off.

Are there any windows tools, which can help me recover the user files, please?

[girishv]

Originally Posted by JMaruru

Thank You! But am NOT so savvy on Linux and unsure whether I can pull this off.

Are there any windows tools, which can help me recover the user files, please?

Sorry, not familiar with Windows much.

You need not have to be familiar with Linux for this. If you are willing to give it a try, I can help you out with all the commands.

All you need to do is make a bootable USB which can be done using Windows too.

All the very best.

[JMaruru]

Originally Posted by girishv

You need not have to be familiar with Linux for this. If you are willing to give it a try, I can help you out with all the commands.

Did the bootable USB and booted into Ubuntu.

When I try the 'install testdisk' command, it throws up the error 'unable to locate package testdisk'.

Please advise.

[girishv]

Originally Posted by JMaruru

Did the bootable USB and booted into Ubuntu.

When I try the 'install testdisk' command, it throws up the error 'unable to locate package testdisk'.

Please advise.

Can you please run the following two commands by opening a terminal

sudo apt update
sudo apt install testdisk

If it throws some error, please let me know