I would do this: Purchase a copy of spinrite from http://www.grc.com and try
it.


-----Original Message-----
From: Personal Computer Hardware discussion List
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of KammannFamily
Sent: Sunday, October 18, 2009 6:29 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [PCBUILD] HDD failure problem

A few weeks ago, my new Sony Vaio AW-290JAH Windows Vista Home premium
started behaving erratically. At first it simply gave me a BSOD and then
restarted, but after about 4 BSOD's it was taking 2 and 3 tries to get it to
boot up properly. At this point I decided I needed to get all of my data off
of my HDD onto an external and figure out where to go from there. About 5
min into the file transfer, my laptop crashed and refused all attempts to
re-boot. I talked to tech support at Sony and they told my to buy the
recovery disks and see if I could repair the windows installation. The
recovery disks were a complete failure. I then had Sony simply send me a new
HDD. This means that my computer is now working, but I still don't have any
of my data. I have 8-10gb of data stuck on my trashed HDD. I also tried to
boot my computer by making a VistaPE boot disk from my newly installed HDD.
It would boot up, but the old HDD would not show up as a hard drive. I also
tried hooking it up through a external enclosure, to no avail. I am thinking
that the actual mechanical part of the HDD is what is broken, not the
software/drivers on it. I have contacted Sony and have a name of a data
retrieval company that will take my drive apart in a clean room and manually
read the data off of it. However, this is bound to be expensive. I am open
to any ideas on how to fix this problem myself (short of building a clean
room...)
Alex Kammann

        The NOSPIN Group has added a new feature on our website,
           web based bulletinboard for questions and answers:
              Visit our sister website at http://nospin.com

         PCBUILD maintains hundreds of useful files for download
                     visit our download web page at:
                  http://freepctech.com/downloads.shtml