How to recover files off a crashed hard drive
This is a guest article written by Emma Best from laptopical.com, a website that writes comprehensive laptop reviews and news.
One universal true about computers is this: the hard drive will fail. It is not a matter of if, but a matter of when. In an ideal world, every computer user would make regular, full backups of their system. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case, and far too often computer users find themselves with a crashed hard drive.
If your hard drive has crashed and you’re unable to boot into the system to retrieve your files, you’ll have to take a different, more involved approach. This tutorial will show you how to recover files off of a crashed hard drive.
These instructions assume that the hard drive is crashed but not physically damaged. You can use these instruction with both Mac OS X and Windows. You will need a second computer with Internet access and a DVD burner, a blank CD, and the crashed system should have an optical drive.
Step 1
Download a Linux distro that offers a LiveCD, or that can be run from a CD or pen drive. Small-file size options are Puppy Linux and Damn Small Linux. However, I recommend downloading Ubuntu, simply because mounting a drive is effortless with it and does not require the Terminal.
Step 2
Burn the downloaded ISO file to a blank CD using Nero or any other burning software.
Step 3
Insert the CD into your crashed system and restart the computer. At BIOS, enter setup by pressing the designated key for your system – for most computers, it’s F12 or ESC.
Once in BIOS, select Boot Sequence and highlight CD/DVD Drive. Press the ‘U’ button to move the option above the internal hard drive, then save and exit BIOS.
The computer will restart and the Ubuntu logo will be displayed along with a menu of options. Choose ‘Try Ubuntu….’ This will start Ubuntu, running it from your CD drive. Don’t worry, it won’t affect your hard drive in any way.
Step 4
After Ubuntu has loaded, look in the upper left corner. Choose Places. Towards the bottom of the menu, you will see a picture of a hard drive – it will say something like ‘0.0GB Drive’, displaying the capacity of your internal hard drive. Click to mount.
Step 5
Plug in your external hard drive or flash drive. Navigate to Places and choose the new drive you just plugged in to mount it.
Step 6
The internal hard drive and external media are now mounted. Look on the desktop for the hard drives. Click them to open.
In the windows that appear, you can choose Documents and Settings and copy the data files to your external drive, or you can simply copy the entire internal drive to the external drive and sort it out later.
Step 7
Once finished, shut the machine down and remove the CD when instructed. You can now reload your system as normal.
December 8th, 2008 at 8:35 am
I dont have a comment, but I have a question similar. I have a satellite x205 s9349 that I got from the neighbor. When I first turned it on..it said something like bootmgr missing..I think. Ok I put in the recovery disk and now it wont reinstall, it I have set the bios to cd first, I have clicked on the c at the beginning of boot up..get the options of recovery, or system options….when I click recovery..it says The tool could not get HDD physical information..click ok to turn off. Now…I have gotten another message as well. Failure fixed disk 0 Media test failure pxe something exiting. Now some other person said the hard drive has failed..which doesnt make sense..but I suppose thats the issue…It just seems odd to me…help please.
February 24th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
holy cow, that worked like a charm. it saved many multitrack original recordings that were trapped on the hard drive. i have older crashed drives that i saved until something like this came along. im getting back tons of stuff i had worked hours and hours on that fell to similar fates.(viruses) i thought they were lost forever. thanks laptop freak and ubuntu.
March 3rd, 2009 at 3:43 pm
Tried the file recovery procedure. Everything went smoothly until I got to mounting the drive. I got a message “Cannot mount volume”. The detail says “$Logfile indicates unclean shutdown (0.0) Failed to mount ‘/dev/sada1′: Operation not supported Mount is denied because NTFS is marked to be in use. Choice 1:if you have Windows then disconnect the external devices by clicking on the “safely remove hardware” icon. Choice 2: if you don’t have windows then you can use the “force” option for [large space] your own responsibility. For example type on the command line: mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda1/media/disk -o force .
I found the terminal window and entered the command after the prefix ubuntu@ubuntu:-$ which comes up, but I get a message “Only Root Can Do That”. Any ideas?
March 17th, 2009 at 9:36 am
I had the same problem Ken. I ended up typing the following in the terminal.
sudo mkdir /media/OS
sudo mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda3 /media/OS -o force
You will obviously have to adjust it for your drive but it worked great for me…2nd time I have had to do it in 2 months.
April 21st, 2009 at 6:59 am
recieved the following message
$mftmirr does not match $mft(record3 ) failed to mount ‘?dev?sda1′: inout/output error NTFS is either inconsistent or you have hardware faults..
any help would be appreciated.
May 12th, 2009 at 10:27 pm
I took my HP pavillion dv9922us to Geek Squad and they ran an identical program to Ubuntu and it failed because my hard disk is completely trashed. Ubuntu and similar programs can’t even find it after the CD boots itself. I have been told the only way to get past this is having the disk actually torn apart similar to how the FBI does it and it will cost $1,000 at the absolute minimum. Is there anything else you know about at this point or someone who does a cheaper job? I spent $1400 on the computer and i haven’t even paid it off yet, and yes it’s under warranty but HP won’t pay to get my information, only exchange the hard disk.
Thanks,
Kevin.
May 21st, 2009 at 6:15 am
Hi
I just used it i did it a little different way than you asked for and it still worked it worked like a charm even when my keyboard and mouse did not work i was so happy i saved a lot of music and pics from the hardrive that the family worked on for so long so thanks a lot laptop freak and ubuntu
June 2nd, 2009 at 3:09 pm
I have the same problem as NJN. I tried to mount my hard drive (OS) and it says it’s inconsistent or has hardware faults. What can I do to get my files?
July 13th, 2009 at 6:15 pm
Hi,
I tried it using ubuntu 7. i got the laptop HD out & connect it to a external convertor (like a portable HD) & connected it to my desktop PC. but i cant mount the laptop HD. It does not connect to the windows environmnt also. Someone pls help me to get my files back.
Thanks
September 17th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
Hey,
As I was installing Ubuntu, 3 messages appeared similar to this: [12.224205] ata1: softreset failed (device not ready).
It was installed but for some reason I cannot mount the hard drive. It doesn’t appear in “places” like step 4 indicates. I was able to mount flash drive but couldn’t mount HDD.
Have any advice? Does this mean it’s physically damaged and i wont be able to retreive any info?
Thanks,
December 3rd, 2009 at 5:18 am
My Toshiba Laptop SA50-101 Hard Drive shows bad sectors in D-Drive. ALthough amount is still small (about 16KB) but is there any way to remove them. I tried formatting the D Drive from C prompt but they are not going. How to stop it further propagating if can not be removed?
February 2nd, 2010 at 5:39 pm
Is this method will help to resolve the problem: Reboot and select proper boot device or insert boot media in selected boot device?