Hello all...

A clients notebook hard drive has failed to some degree, I can connect it to another computer and see it in 'computer management' but its uninitialized/unallocated.

Is there a way to repair any partition tables or whatever to get data off the drive again??

Or maybe just initialize the disk but not format it.... then maybe search for deleted files from the drive??

Any help is appreciated.

With the right software, and stable destination to recover to, it should be possible to save your files. But it is very important to use good commercial software and not some freeware rubbish. Also, you must ensure you do not initialise, format or make any writing to the disk.

If you have any doubt you could take it to a local computer store, or computer repair outfit, they could possibly do it while you wait and should be quite cheap.

Thanks for that... Im using a trial of DiskInternals Partition Recovery 2.0.... downloaded from the files section of this site...

Seems to be finding things so I think I'll be buying it.

I am a 'local repair shop' and would usually take a failed drive like this to another place, but recently they've stuffed me around and very rarely been on of any help anyway. So Im gonna start trying to repair more drives myself.

The DiskInternals software has already found the partitions (took a few hours) and now Its recovering the NTFS partition and its up to 21700 folders and 234950 files.... few more hours to go but its looking good so far!!!

Any other recovery applications you'd recommend???

People have different preferences regarding software. look in the software section of this forum, you should find some info.

Your scan is taking some time, you should check for any erros maybe there are surface defects developing slowing down the process.

If you are looking to start hard disk repairs, it is a long and difficult learning process and at this point you should seriously consider entering into a partner program where you can outsource the more difficult cases until you are confident enough to deal with them. There are many professional firms offerring a partner scheme at good rates, might be worth checking them out.

The partner program does sound like something good to look into.

Im going to try to do more of the simple hard drive failures (ie, when the drive can still actually be accessed) but totally dead hard drives I will still send away for the 'high end' help.

Quite possible this hard drive will have errors. The computer is under warranty but of course the original supplier or manufacturer will not recover the data before doing the full system recovery... so if I do successfully recover the data I'll check the condition of the hard drive and then send it back under warranty if needed.

Thanks again.