Hard Disk Recovery

[ColinGrant]

Share details please

Karl,

Could you share the details of your findings for HDD and cable please?

My Inspiron 8000 is 4 days out of 1 yr warranty when the HDD clicks and then blue screens or powers down. So I need a replacement HDD, and I'd like to get stuff off too.

TIA,
COlin

[Karl1]

Re: Share details please

Colin, the clicking is general a sypmtom of complete hard disk failure. if you still have access to the disk get your data of asap. Full lab recovery of HDD is about 100 gbp per gig.
The cheapest for 10gb was around £570. If the disk hasn't completely failed you can get some tools off at ontrack.com which will run more advance tests than the regular diagnostics. If it is a fujistu drive they have their own diagnostic tools which can be download from the web.

For USB external case & cables try...
www.span.com, [email protected]
the usb 2 model works under usb 1 as well I am told.

For cheap hard drives (bearing in mind Dell want 276 + VAT and delivery for 10gb + transport) try
www.ahead-computers.com
I got a 20 gb direct replacement for 90 quid.
It is only 4 screws to get the disk out of the transport.

Best of luck Karl

[ColinGrant]

Thanks

Karl,

Thanks for sharing the info. The HDD failing is very odd - it sometimes lasts a couple of hours, and once lasted 5 or so hours - enough to uninstall a lot of software and defrag it (in case the end tracks were duff as it was down to 900MB free). Gave me hope but didn't help.

I've been to the IBM web site (mine's a Travelstar) and downloaded the drive quick test - creates a bootable floppy. I ran the quick test and it reported that everything was fine!

Back in to Win2000 and an hour later it all goes pear shaped again.

My initial guess was that it was all temperature related, but I think now its just failing more and more often.

The IBM 3 year warranty looks to be a complete wash out (IMHO) as it starts by saying they don't guarantee that it will work for the warranty period (or some weasel words like that).

The good news is that I called my local computer shop this morning (www.woc.co.uk) and they had the 20GB Travelstar in stock for £92 (+VAT) and also a little adapter to allow a 2.5 HDD to be connected to a regular desktop PC IDE cable (£8+VAT).

I have precious little on my laptop that isn't duplicated elsewhere, backed up or whatever - lucky me Still, there's bound to be something I need and now I can maybe get it off straight in to my PC.

Thanks again for sharing your info.

Cheers,
Colin

[Karl1]

Re: Thanks

no probs,
the warrrenty is probably pointless. with fijitsu the warranty is for 3 years but that is with their end user ie dell. as dell gave only given a 1 year warrenty fujitsu can't help unless dell goes into liquidation.

[majorfailure]

fujitsu disk recovery

The review on many boards about how good Fujitsu drives are do not seem to mention how some Fujitsu mpg and mpf series ie mpg3102at and mpg3204at drives are failing prematureley.

After some frustrating weeks from Fujitsu we had valuable data recovered from a batch of our office machines that all suddenly failed. This company www.Computer-Recovery.com recovered all the data. but companies reffered to us by Fujitsu support could not recover any data !!!.. very useless.

[Incubus]

Dell Support

Taking of Dell...

I'm generally very happy with the 3 laptops I've bought through them...

However this one is playing up. A call to Dell support yesterday got me through to 'Mary'. I think 'Mary' was sitting in Bombay!

No success with 'Mary' - grasp of English a problem.. So I went to www.dell.co.uk/fast - you can raise a support call and they aim to reply in an hour. I was sent a link to a diagnostic tool, sent the error message back, and now a new hard drive is on the way.

So if you're looking to raise a call, I suggest this Email method...

No longer get the chance to speak to young Irish girlies... Suddenly Dell aren't as appealing!!

[RobAnt]

Re: Dell Support

Just an aside on this.

RAMMShack do a lovelly piece of kit that will allow you to install your laptop IDE hard drive in a standard PC for £16 inc VAT & Delivery. You'll need a jumper to turn it into a slave, but 2.5" to 3.5" drive rails are included, as well as the IDE adapter.

[Chaos]

Drive Fitness Test

If you have a dell laptop then you are probably using IBM hard drive. Go to ibm's website and download a software called "Drive Fitness Test" (DFT). It will not only test your damaged hard drive but can also fix it. I fixed my Dell hard drive with it in August and now its working fine. DFT will erase your original data but save your hard drive.

[kittimeow]

no obvious jumpers?

Okay.
So I'm trying to put my dell laptop (inspiron 8000/latitude c800) hard drive into my desktop. I got the adapter and all that, but I can't figure out how to turn the laptop hard drive into a slave drive. There are no obvious jumpers to set for this. Please help me and my poor comatose hoard of files

[RobAnt]

Re: no obvious jumpers?

There are pins on the hard drive that you need to short (just like a normal drive 3.5").

They should be indicated on the drive itself, but you might need to go to the IBM website if the instructions aren't there.

Which drive is it, and I'll try and find out for you.

PS/ I don't recall you ordering it from us? tch tch.


Bog Standard IBM/Hitachi TravelStar Jumper Documentation here!

Incidentally, we charge £16 all in for the 2.5" to 3.5" converter - which includes drive rails (but no jumper :lol )