[girryman]

hi all again helping a friend out like always and ever time he starts up his laptop (fujitsu) this message comes up: smart failure predicted on hard disk 0: wdc wd800ve-07hdt0-(pm)
Warning: immediately back up your data and replace your hard diskdrive. a failure may be imminent
pres f1 to continue.
so my question is: dose this mean the hard disk is dead or might there be a way around this by reinstalling windows again or with a recovery cd (if he has on) ? thanks again for all your time and effort.

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This will ususally imply an actual hardware failure. I would definitely take steps immediately to get the data backed up and look into purchasing a hard drive.

I ignored this once I backed stuff up more frequently but I didnt take it seriously, moral of the story: I got burned

[jaxisland]

This will ususally imply an actual hardware failure. I would definitely take steps immediately to get the data backed up and look into purchasing a hard drive.

I ignored this once I backed stuff up more frequently but I didnt take it seriously, moral of the story: I got burned

[girryman]

thanks for the quick reply. ive no idea how to back up the data??? im a bit clueless on that any help would be great. also i did a chkdsk and it came back that there were no problems.....

[jaxisland]

I would expect those results. Those check the indexes and clusters on the drive, this is more of an actual problem with the hardware.

What version of XP are you running?

[girryman]

its running windows xp home edition, cheers

[jaxisland]

Is the XP Home cd available, that has a builtin backup utility on it.

[girryman]

yep i have a windows xp home edition sp2 will that do? thanks

[jaxisland]

Yup. Put that in the computer and go to: VALUEADD\MSFT\NTBACKUP

double click the ntbackup.msi and that will install.

Once thats done to access it all you have to do is go to Start -> Run -> type: ntbackup

hit enter.

Once the screen comes up there is a wizard you can follow that will allow you to choose what to back up and where.

My recommendation is you pick a small folder, back it up somewhere else, then do a restore.

This will get you familiar with the interface and it will make sure things backup and restore ok. Its a very simple program to use.

Let me know how that goes.

[girryman]

hi again ive got to go to work is it ok to pick this up tomorow and i can crack on and see where i get and let you know? thanks again for your time and effort, take care

[jaxisland]

Sounds good.

[girryman]

hi back again, the last instructions you left i cant get my head around it sorry, it goes straight in to windows set up and i dont know where to find VALUEADD\MSFT\NTBACKUP. thanks again for your help

[jaxisland]

While your running windows, pop in the cd, let the screen come up with the install or upgrade or whatever it says, I cant remeber just exit out of that. Go to My Computer and right click on the cd drive and click Explore. From there it should open up a tree view that will allow you to browse to that file.

Let me know how that goes.

[girryman]

thats the problem i cant start up windows as the hard disk is broken and wont let me go any further, the only thing i can can do is boot from the cd, which then gives me the options to reinstall repair or make a partition, thanks for the reply.

[girryman]

i think what i need to do is save the data on the laptop, but is there a way of doing that without windows acutually loading? cheers

[jaxisland]

Ahh Im sorry, I misunderstood. Can you take the hard drive out and use it as a secondary in another computer. Then just copy the data off.
If its a DVD drive they have bootable linux cd's you can download and use that to recover the data off the drive.

Other than that I am not too familiar with apps that work preboot. The above two are the options that I use.