[davehawkinge]

Hi All

a couple of days ago my hard drive decided to die, I have now brought a cable to turn it into a external drive to take off all my files i really need. It now says i need to format two local disks, i really dont wont to do this as im sure i will lose important files, could anyone suggest a way i can get the files off please. thanks in advance

dave

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Hi and welcome,

Sounds like the partition information has been lost. Perhaps you could confirm by taking a screenshot and posting it here?

Also wondering why it wants to format two local disks, do you know how many partitions the drive had originally and sizes?

Cheers

[Troy]

Hi and welcome,

Sounds like the partition information has been lost. Perhaps you could confirm by taking a screenshot and posting it here?

Also wondering why it wants to format two local disks, do you know how many partitions the drive had originally and sizes?

Cheers

[davehawkinge]

Thanks for your reply

I have no idea why it wants to format just two, when i first pluged it all in to use as a external it was working fine and all came up until i tried to access photos need and word files, then it just went and crashed. im wondering if the files will still be recoverable ? sorry im not much help with provdng information. i think it has 1 partiton the laptop isnt even 1 year old yet. i have never formatted the hard drve before. i suspect this was caused by me leaving laptop on bed and over heating, or held the latop upside down im unsure. soon as i plug in the hard as a external it pops up with. you need to format the disk in drive H before you can use it.

[admin]

What kind of errors were you getting while it was still in the notebook?

Why do you think plugging it into an external enclosure will help?

Generally hard drive errors occur in one of 2 areas. Either a something happens to the external PCB (circuit board), or something happens internally to the heads, platters, spindles, etc.

The PCB is about the only thing you can attempt to repair yourself, and I wouldn't recommend it if the data on the drive is critical. The PCB is generally attached with T9 torx screws, and can be replaced if you can find another drive of not only the same make/model, but firmware. There are sites that specialize in the sale of replacement PCBs.

Finally, if you decide to leave it to a pro, hard drive recovery will probably cost at a minimum $500, and can be in the thousands if the damage is internal.