Is there a way to retrieve data from a malfunctioning laptop?

I have a low-end laptop, and a proclivity to put things off when I ought not to, which is to say I haven’t backed the thing up in a while. Apparently my hard-drive quit me the other day because after it refused to boot-up a couple of times, I got it to run diagnostics and it failed the hard disk short DST test. Google tells me that means my hard drive is a goner.

I have a few Wordpad files on the thing that I’d really like to rescue, but my Google-Fu is not strong and my computer savvy is even less strong. I couldn’t find any way to do it myself, which means I’ll most likely have to pay someone to do it. I suppose that’s a natural consequence of buying a really cheap laptop and then not backing your files up regularly, but it hardly seems cost-effective to do so. It’s such a small amount of data I’d like to get back, and I really don’t care about anything else on the dumb thing.

I thought perhaps some of the knowledgeable folks here might be able to provide a solution to my admittedly self-inflicted computer woes. It’s an HP 2000 Notebook PC running (used to run) Windows 8. Model number is HP 2000-2b19wm, the hard drive model is WDC WD3200BPVT.

If your hard drive is totally dead there is no way to get any data; because data resides on that alone. You may be able to take out the hard drive and put it in an external drive dock, or in another computer as a secondary drive, and if it runs, transfer the data. If it is really dead, then only a data recovery firm can get it off, expensively. But it doesn’t seem to be dead, just dying.

You could boot up the laptop with a Linux Live Disk, and a USB pendrive to transfer files to, but it probably won’t see the hard disk if it has stopped working mechanically.
Your laptop, however, may work with a new hard drive.

Like this

Although it’s certainly possible, that’s a relatively new laptop/HD to completely fail suddenly. There are sometimes false positives on those tests. Were there any significant events (eg. hard drop on the floor while system was running) or did you install/change anything right before it happened?

Do this, also, if you have an error code that the test outputted, run it through here.

If you give up on getting any data off of it, you should try doing a full system recovery that will reformat and return your system to how it was out of the box.

I recently downloaded the Malwarebytes trial, beyond that no software changes. I think, but I’m not sure, I might have prematurely closed it during the shutdown process the day before it stopped working. Beyond those I can think of no recent changes or events on that machine.

I’ve had hard drive issues in the past on various devices, and there’s generally been some sign a problem was developing. Not this time, or at least not that I noticed. The suddenness of it does make me think I must have done something to cause this.

I tried that first link prior to posting here, but my BIOS screen had no diagnostics tab, or any option I could find under other tabs. Google led me to another screen, HP PC Hardware Diagnostics UEFI. On that screen there’s an option to run System Tests, and that’s where I determined I had the short DST failure. I hadn’t found your second link prior, and running the Failure ID through it gives me:

*Failure ID Tag PGF4G0-6L076H-MFGJWJ-60SN03
Checksum OK
HP Serial Number 5CG3130PHF
Test Date 2014/07/28 Failure Information (yyyy/mm/dd)
Failure Code 303
Device Storage
Includes
Floppy Drive, Hard Drive, Memory Drive, Optical Drive, SCSI, Tape Drive

Error Message
Hard Disk 1 Quick Test Failure*

I’m not sure how to determine if that’s a false positive or not.

Running an earlier code from the test log, dated the 23rd, provides this.

Failure ID Tag PGF4G0-6L076H-MFGJWJ-60U703
Checksum FAILED

I take these as bad signs. :slight_smile:

I’m willing to try that route before I replace the drive, or the machine itself, but at this juncture the files are more important to me than the doorstop that the laptop has become.

I’d like to thank everyone for their input, I appreciate your assistance.

Interestingly drive recovery these days costs less than it used to. You can often get basic recovery for a few hundred dollars these days. It used to be thousands.

Two services below. There are dozens of others.

http://www.seagate.com/services-software/data-recovery-services/

If you don’t want to spend any real money at least get a 2.5 - 3.5 cable adapter for a few bucks and hook the drive to a desktop as a slave. You might get lucky.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/USB-2-0-to-IDE-SATA-S-ATA-2-5-3-5-HD-HDD-Adapter-Cable-/180550148600

It still does, the low prices you see from those firms are often thing like damaged file allocation tables or master file table. Those types of recoveries most computer shops can pull off with easily aquired software for half that or less. Hardware failures, the cheapest place I know of runs about $800 for basic pictures, docs, etc on a single drive. My shop is a reseller for Drivesavers, I have sent them dozens of clients and every single one has had a good outcome including:

2 dead drives out of a 3 disk RAID5

a guy who dropped his laptop off the edge of a 3 story building that creased the top of the drive housing

a laptop that was run over repeatedly by a pissed off gf

stop doing anything to the drive until you copy the files you want. hook the drive up as a data drive to another computer and try to copy your data files.

Very few harddrives that don’t boot are totally dead (esp. w/o any obvious reason).
That’s a SATA HD.
Buy (or borrow) a SATA-USB drive adapter.
Remove the HD from the laptop (google is your friend).
Connect the HD to the USB adapter and then to a working PC.
Let the PC give the drive a drive letter (most usually E:).
Copy your files - most probably from {E}:\Users{YourUserName}\Documents\My Documents.
Note that this WAS: C:\Users… The drive has a new drive letter when using the adapter.

I agree with pulling the drive out of the laptop and using a usb/sata adapter/enclosure to recover the data.

Some things that may be helpful with this process,

If you plug in the drive and windows doesn’t pop up a new drive in Computer, take a look at disk management to see if windows recognizes a new hard drive exists.

I would recomend using software like Roadkil’s Unstoppable Copier to recover the files if you can get to them. It will be much more reliable then the usual windows copy.

If you can’t get the drive to show up, try turning the adapter off and on a few times, or unplugging and plugging the power to the adapter a few times. Sounds silly but sometimes its enough to get it to a point where windows can see it and you don’t need much to access it and pull some documents off.

There are also programs meant to recover files from formatted or damaged drives, I’ve used Data Recovery Wizard for drives with bad sectors and for formatted drives and its been worth the investment. The free version will let you scan the drive and show you what can be recovered so you can find out if its going to work for you before buying.

Thats all I’ve got from my experience, best of luck!

~also dropbox, skydrive, and google docs in the future for small and important docs! Encrypted zips or even portable encrypted drives if you’re worried about security.

Jeez, this was longer ago than I realized. Just wanted to thank everyone for their input and advice.

The problem has been resolved, though not in a good way. I discovered that a co-worker tinkers with this sort of thing on the side, and asked him to look at it. He assures me the thing really is just a paperweight now.

Lesson re-learned; save early, save often. :slight_smile:

you still may want to consider letting a shop look at it. Many “helpful friends” don’t really try that hard or have glaring gaps in their skills sets that may not be obvious to average users.

Even then, services like drivesavers most likely can retrieve your files, just a matter of if its worth it to you.

I agree. Orangeapples: Your porn may still be salvageable!! :smiley:

If only. Alas, it was far more irreplaceable, and perhaps more embarrassing than porn. These were WordPad files constituting three months worth of ‘work’ (since the last time it occurred to me to back the stupid thing up) on my D&D files for a campaign I had been running for well over a year.

You could be right, drachillix, this guy might not have skills equal to the task, but I just couldn’t justify any real expenditure for a silly game I play with my nerdy friends. I cheaped out and got what I paid for, I s’pose. :slight_smile:

not spending money to recover data that is not valuable in the real world is not a cheap out.

not spending money on a backup or spending the time to do a backup on even recreational data is.

even a name brand drive that has worked for years can fail without warning.