Recovering a crashed hard drive?

Question

Exactly a year ago, my old computer's hard drive crashed. I miss all my stuff I had on it so I decided to mess with it again. What happens when I turn it on is a black screen saying my video card info comes up, and then a screen with a giant E (for emachines) and then it stops at a black screen with a little flashing white dash in the corner.

So, what's wrong with it? Can I recover the data by myself?

I took it into Best Buy last year when it died, and they said everything showed up fine on their stuff, but it would cost me like 150$ or something to have it recovered. I finally have the money now, but I want to see if I can do it myself and save that money =|

And will they still be able to recover since its been an entire year? And if I get Best Buy to recover it, what do they put all the info on? Like, a CD, or something?

Answer 1

If they said that everything showed up fine then I think you can do it yourself. Take a look at this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817163046

Its a 3.5" USB hard drive enclosure. You can place your hard drive in here and try to save the files to your new computer through a USB cable and it cost less than $20 all together. Its very very easy, no software or anything to deal with. If you can work a USB thumb drive and a screwdriver, you can do this.

If you don't like shopping online (you should it's cheap) you can also get the 3.5" USB hard drive enclosure at frys, ebay, local computer shops, maybe even best buys.

And who knows, if there's nothing wrong with the drive in the first place then you now have an external hard drive to store stuff to! From your description it didn't seemed like your hard drive died at all.

Also it doesnt matter how long the drive has been sitting out, it'll still be in its exact state as you left it a year ago (unless you really banged/kicked it around or something)

And yes if you went to best buy, they will most likely put it on a CD, but probably DVD as it cant store about 5x a CD.

Answer 2

You can download ccleaner for free here: http://bit.ly/1Bk5V5C

First open CCleaner
Go to the Cleaner tab and you will be confronted by a very confusing lineup of checkboxes.
To make this brief, below is my recommended setup:
Under internet explorer check temporary internet files, cookies, and last download location. Most users don't really need this stuff. keep history and bookmarks unchecked, history is a maybe, but you don't want to lose bookmarked sites. You can normally leave Windows Explorer, System, and Advanced alone.
Run CCleaner and it will start deleting files.
afterward it will present you with a list of the files deleted, you really don't need to go through it as it will be several pages long.
The registry cleaner is recommended for slightly more advanced users. Use it after uninstalling programs as they will often leave behind incorrect registry entries.
If you decide to run Registry cleaner then review the items detected and always back up the registry (I keep a folder aside for this)
The Tools tab lets you uninstall programs and set startup programs. Why do you need this if Windows has all of these features? Especially with Vista Home Ed. The windows defender software explorer( startup programs) doesn't pick up some entries (however software explorer is easier to use).
Using CCleaner to uninstall programs and then check for leftover registry entries takes less time.
Under Options you can determine how CCleaner cleans your files. I leave this alone.

Answer 3

yes yourhighness, you can DO IT yourself,

its a technical problem that a more IT proficient person would solve, its like they will charge you to do something because its there profession, and you would have no idea how easy or hard it may be, this seems to be a recovery problem.

you can check for a system recovery disk, also use the last known good configuration option, you can try safe mode, again this may also be a hard disk problem, that means no data is recoverable, its hard to explain, and i do not recommend u do it yourself, u might end up losing more than data.

that can be a partition problem, a video problem, or a file preventing ur pc from starting that needs to be repaired.

be more specif ?

and oh yeah, computer nerd will not do it for free, computer nerd more smarter now, we want to get paid what we are worth

Answer 4

the common technique for convalescing records from ineffective stressful drives is this: a million. examine to verify if it works normally. 2. If no longer, attempt to freeze the stressful tension for roughly an hour, or all evening if necessary. 3. Open your computing device (shop stressful tension frozen) 4. warning: paintings as quickly as accessible to place in the stressful tension and boot up the computing device. you could evaluate some form of cooling to lengthen your working time. 5. replica the archives to a working stressful tension. this methodology is a final motel; you have approximately 20-30 minutes to repair up the stressful tension, and afterwards it won't paintings in any respect. stable luck!

Answer 5

You can do it yourself. You will have to get some utilities (I've listed one below) that will let you undelete the files and restore the system.

If the hard drive is totally gone, you will have to save everything to a different hard drive.

Answer 6

try spotmau power suite 2007 you can buy it for 40.00 or down load free from limewire.

Answer 7

I can do it for half that price ;)