Laptop Hard Disk crash?

[dominic_in4]

I was on my laptop, Inspiron 8100, and everything was fine, no errors or anything. Took a break and when I came back my computer had a black screen. I tried to restart and it goes to the dell load page and windows XP pro page but that’s it. It goes back and forth between the two pages. A blue screen pops up between them for about half a second. I took a picture of it so I could read it, the error code is 0x000000ed. I searched Microsoft support for help and everything it told me to try failed. It says something about the volume having 2 un-repairable something or others.
Tried reloading XP and it wont work, wont even repair. I did, however, get it to test some functions...everything passed except the following (this is exactly what my computer said);

IDE Disk 0 - Confidence Test
Status: Fail
Status Code: DOS DDG-D Disk 193 066
Device: IDE_Disk_0
Test: Confidence_Test-Write_Test
Release: 1083 Module(s): Disk
Msg: Block 77358699: Address not found

I have no clue what this means...can you help? Do you know if ill be able to get any of my files off my hard drive? It is more important to get my data back than any other thing. Its very crucial.

[nihil]

You have a Dell laptop?...........ask them........You do not say if it is in warranty or not?

It sounds as if your HDD is dead, so you have little recourse other than to go back to your manufacturer.

[jeremy_in2]

I've seen this error many times on my Dell computer as well as other computers.
You are looking at a Hard Drive failure. From what I can deduce from your posting here it appears to be a hard drive that’s locked up and cannot read from any directory. This is the similar problem I’ve also faced in past and I was very much tensed regarding the data caz it had very-very important to be given in my company within few days. I tried many options to recover the data but the result was zero. I even went to recovery labs to get my data but they even refused to extract in that short duration. Finally, I could locate some Data Recovery companies in internet search and contacted SalvageData Recovery lab, an US based company. They had asked me to send the Hard Disk by post so I did. They are prompt and got my 92% data recovered in a few days time. I was very happy with the them caz it saved me from being kicked out from the company. I hope the lab may also help you, and you may be able to get your data back.

[morganlefay]

Just had a dell desktop fail on me...Western Digital Harddrive...


On site next day service replaced the 6 month old drive with a nice 160 gig Seagate...

Harddrives fail.....backups are essential

MLF

[MadBeaver]

Bad week for laptop hard-drives. I've already replaced hard-drives on two laptops this week. A dell with a dead IBM HD, and an HP with a dead Toshiba HD.

[brokencrow]

You could try booting up to an XP cd or a PE cd (Bart PE), and
after bringing up a command prompt, run "chkdsk /r c:" and see
if that doesn't fix the bad sectors. A good trick for recovering
data from a bad hdd. Definitely need to replace that puppy though.

edit -- run Spinrite if you can get a copy of it.

[nihil]

Hi Guys,

This is a spam post.............Jeremy and Dominic (both well known Hindu forenames) are playing a "game"

They both have the same IP address...............in India

[morganlefay]

Good job nihil...

Here have some wine

MLF

[david244us]

awesome nihil, as good as I am in the security filled you are the man if i must say, and I can't stand that kind of B.S nice job

[nihil]

Well folks, thanks for the encouragement, but it is my duty as a moderator?

Incidentally, this sort of scam/spam is becoming more prevalent these days.

It is not new though.............must go back to the 1850's or earlier?..... the "plant" in the crowd for street traders, gamblers and such?

I will risk sounding totally cynical and say that there are no "new sins", only the technology has changed

Morgana~ cheers my dear