Hey Guys (and gals),
My wife received the blue screen of death on her laptop yesterday stating she had an unmountable boot drive.  Done some checking on my own real quick and realized this means the hard drive has failed for booting purposes...or maybe all together.  I have tried to do the recover mode when booting up and have NOT been able to get it to boot back into windows.  I know that I may be able to do so with a recovery disk or the windows disk and booting from there.  If I cannot get it to boot into windows, I need to figure out a way to get some critical things off of there for her...mainly pictures.  If I need to, can I pull the hard drive out of the laptop and "slave" it into my tower to see if I can get information off that way...or can someone (possibly BK's L2 - Abram) provide me some options???

Taz

a program called GETDATABACK  should help if only the boot sector is gone

Getdatabac is a great program. I think it can run off a disc or USB drive, but then you'll need a another drive to copy the files you recover...

Though the fix maybe as easy as rebuilding your MBR (Master Boot Record).

Oh pre-made guides. You save me so much time:   http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/20864-mbr-restore-windows-7-master-boot-record.html
 

And let this be a lesson: BACK UP your most precious data! of course I saw this often, but I don't practice it as often as I should. DVD-Rs may be getting a bit 'outdated', but writable discs are good up to 60 years. This has started to becoem a concern for archivists; finding media that will stant up to time, but not cost a bundle. Crystals and qubit to the rescue! (maybe)

Abram...I had her trained about backing up often...we only have our most recent photos of when my daughter and grandson were up here...so just the past week and a half.  Other than that, we have CD/DVD's and other external hard drives with years of pictures on them.  We are good about that, just want to get the latest pics off of the hard drive that she hadn't backed up yet.

Otherwise...I really appreciate the advice and will give GetDataBack a try...

Taz

I usually leave my pictures on the camera's memory card until I have them downloaded on my computer and external HD. Then I wait a year or two and delete them from the camera.

If you have a spare drive install the OS on it and try to access the damaged drive as a secondary drive.  If you are unable to access the data by software you might want to try to freeze the HD.  I know it sounds odd but we have had good luck doing this at work when software can not recover the data.  Let it set in the freezer over night and try the drive again.  You must work fast the HD will heat up fast and start giving errors.

Another option to look at is UltimateBootCD. this does nave network support so as the laptop comes online you can see data files on your laptop and you would have network support to copy these files to a network share thru your home network.  

Good Luck!

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

Looks like I may be good to go...talked to a gentleman at work...pretty smart (and not saying you guys aren't) and said this was almost sure-fired to get access to the files and maybe even fix the MBR.

He pointed me to UNetBootIn to create a bootable thumb drive
Then to Puppy Linux
I then used those to actually create a bootable Linux thumb drive
Plugged it into the computer, hit F12 to boot from USB

AND...I have been in and saving the last few pics that my wife hadn't saved yet.

NOW...if I can access the hard drive, but just can't boot it, is there any way to save this laptop from death???

Taz

once you have gotten all your files/pics Ect. its as simple as replacing the HDD and re installing windows sir

Taz

Before give your data to anyone buy one of these and remove the hard drive use this adaptor plug it into your pc you should be able to get all your data.

As long as the hard drive controller is still good.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812119244

It's only 20.00 buck

I never give anyone my data!

never mind
I see you got your data.

Good deal!

That is why I use carbonate so I never have to worry about a computer being damaged, lost, or stolen. I will always have my data.

This is also the main reason that I switched form RAID 0 (Striped) to Raid 1 (Mirrored).  I need both HDDs to simultaneous fail before I lose everything now!