As valis noted, unfortunately that confirms what I first thought.
Below are my general instructions to help retrieve data off of the drive, you may want/need to change them slightly depending on your situation.
The overall idea is to boot to another OS off of a flash drive or DVD, then copy the data files from the dying/dead harddrive to another drive. If the internal harddrive is completely dead, you will not be able to retrieve any data off of it.
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xPUD From USB to Retrieve Data
Requirements:
Below are my general instructions to help retrieve data off of the drive, you may want/need to change them slightly depending on your situation.
The overall idea is to boot to another OS off of a flash drive or DVD, then copy the data files from the dying/dead harddrive to another drive. If the internal harddrive is completely dead, you will not be able to retrieve any data off of it.
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xPUD From USB to Retrieve Data
Requirements:
- Clean, working computer.
- USB drive.
- Download xPUD and the installer to the desktop of your clean computer.
- Insert your USB drive.
- Press Start > My Computer > right click your USB drive > choose Format > Quick format.
- Double click the unetbootin-xpud-windows-387.exe that you just downloaded.
- Press Run then OK.
- Select the DiskImage option then click the Browse button located on the right side of the textbox field.
- Browse to and select the xpud-0.9.2.iso file you downloaded.
- Verify the correct drive letter is selected for your USB device then click OK.
- It will install a little bootable OS on your USB device.
- Once the files have been written to the device you will be prompted to reboot ~ do not reboot and instead just Exit the UNetbootin interface.
- After it has completed do not choose to reboot the clean computer simply close the installer.
- Remove the USB and insert it in the sick computer.
- Boot the Sick computer.
- Press F12 and choose to boot from the USB.
- Follow the prompts.
- A Welcome to xPUD screen will appear.
- Press File.
- Expand mnt.
- sda1,2...usually corresponds to your HDD.
- sdb1 is likely your USB.
- If you have inserted another storage medium (e.g. external harddrive to transfer data to), other drives may show here as well. You will need to view each one to determine which is which if it isn't clear.
- From here you should be able to access the files on your sick computer's harddrive, then transfer them to your external storage.