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Laptop Resurrection? http://www.x404.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=9857	Page 1 of 2

Author:	phantombudgie [ Fri Aug 06, 2010 12:17 am ]
Post subject:	Laptop Resurrection?
My father-in-law's Toshiba Satellite U200 stopped working a couple of days ago. A quick hop into the BIOS diagnostic mode confirmed that the hardware is all OK, despite an epic overheating problem. The following boot attempt ended up with a black screen which informed me the partition table is unwell I am assuming this is bad news. The laptop has(d) XP pro installed. I have a Dell SP2 XP pro install disc disc, which I attempted to fix the install with, but it's not finding C:\Windows... Is there a way to (relatively easily) restore the original install from this state? Or do I need to just try to remove the documents etc (any suggestions for good methods?) and start it over?

Author:	big_D [ Fri Aug 06, 2010 7:12 am ]
Post subject:	Re: Laptop Resurrection?
Does he have a backup? If so, try a repair re-install, but if the partition table is corrupt, you'll probably need to start from scratch. My first stop is always Spinrite (http://www.grc.com), if the user doesn't have a recent backup. It can work wonders. It works at the hardware level and reads and re-writes each sector, irrelevant of format, until it works without errors. Some drives will work again after a couple of hours, but I've heard of Spinrite taking days to get through a badly damaged disk, but it worked without errors again afterwards. Then I make a complete backup!

Author:	phantombudgie [ Fri Aug 06, 2010 7:35 am ]
Post subject:	Re: Laptop Resurrection?
There is no backup ("a computer is a tool, it should just work") so I'll give that a shot, thanks!

Author:

JJW009 [ Fri Aug 06, 2010 8:49 am ]

Post subject:

Re: Laptop Resurrection?


	phantombudgie wrote: "a computer is a tool, it should just work"

LOL

I guess they never service their car either, because it "should just work" :lol:

Author:	phantombudgie [ Fri Aug 06, 2010 9:15 am ]
Post subject:	Re: Laptop Resurrection?
It's just that computers are not seen in the same category as cars by the general public, when they clearly should be. His car is immaculate by the way Anyway, I've left Spinrite on the case at home, I'll see what's happening when I get back!

Author:	phantombudgie [ Wed Aug 18, 2010 10:16 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Laptop Resurrection?
Spinrite is STILL RUNNING from starting a week ago. Got bogged down on a really messed up region at 55% progress and going sector by sector... could take weeks at this rate... I think I need a priest and a gravestone for it

Author:

big_D [ Thu Aug 19, 2010 4:08 am ]

Post subject:

Re: Laptop Resurrection?


	phantombudgie wrote: Spinrite is STILL RUNNING from starting a week ago. Got bogged down on a really messed up region at 55% progress and going sector by sector... could take weeks at this rate... I think I need a priest and a gravestone for it

Once it is past the damaged section, it should finish the rest in a hour or two.

I've never had it take longer than 12 hours, but one guy, who wrote to Steve Gibson (he reads out a letter each week on his Security Now podcast), said that Spinrite needed nearly a month to finish his disk, but it repaired it 100% in the end and he got all of the data off!

Author:

adidan [ Thu Aug 19, 2010 7:00 am ]

Post subject:

Re: Laptop Resurrection?


	big_D wrote: Spinrite needed nearly a month to finish his disk, but it repaired it 100% in the end and he got all of the data off!

What is this black magic of which you speak? I may have to look at that for a couple of tempremental drives I have laying around.

Author:

big_D [ Thu Aug 19, 2010 7:26 am ]

Post subject:

Re: Laptop Resurrection?

http://www.grc.com/spinrite.htm

It reads each physical block (it ignores any formatting information, it reads the blocks directly from the drive and attempts to re-write them). It will continue to do so, until the block reads error free, which is why it can take a long time on some, badly damaged drives.

That also means, that you can take a drive from a PS3, XBox, Sky+ box etc. and put it into a PC and run SpinRite over it and it will repair it.


	GRC wrote: How SpinRite PREVENTS disk crashes Running SpinRite periodically prevents disk crashes by containing any problems that are discovered. SpinRite examines the data storage surface of a drive one region at a time. It first reads the data out of a region, then exercises that region with patterns of data that SpinRite has determined are the most difficult for the drive to read and write. In this way, any weak and failing areas within the region are located and removed from use while none of the drive's original data is being stored there. Only after the region has been made absolutely safe, will the drive's original data be restored to that area.


	GRC wrote: How SpinRite PREDICTS disk failure Drives begin to fail when they have increasing difficulty reading and writing data that they once read and wrote without trouble. SpinRite reads and re-writes the entire surface of the drive, reporting everything it finds. Thus, it is able to provide early warning of increasing numbers of regions that are becoming troublesome for the drive. The drive can then be backed up and removed from service before a complete catastrophe results in loss of any data. Since NO OTHER UTILITY analyzes the surface of a drive WHILE IT CONTAINS DATA, NO OTHER UTILITY can warn its user of imminent drive failure. For example, Scandisk's "surface analysis test" is read-only and provides no exercise for the drive or the data surfaces. Just before a drive fails, Scandisk indicates that everything is completely fine, whereas SpinRite goes nuts showing the user that the drive is near death. Which utility would you rather be using?


	GRC wrote: How SpinRite RECOVERS After a Crash Post-Disaster Data Recovery is perhaps SpinRite's strongest and most unique capability since so much more can be done than any other disk utility has ever bothered to do. Speaking of which, Scandisk is probably guilty of more data loss than any other utility ever created. Since everyone has Scandisk, everyone uses it. But few people realize that Scandisk does NOTHING other than discard any data that it can't read. By comparison, SpinRite never takes a drive's data for granted. It contains and deploys an extensive arsenal of data recovery techniques and technologies which pull any drive's data back from oblivion. SpinRite is even able to recover most of the data in a sector that can never be perfectly read, and which any other utility software discards in full.

Author:	phantombudgie [ Tue Aug 31, 2010 11:19 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Laptop Resurrection?
...still going... sweepstake anyone?

Author:	phantombudgie [ Tue Sep 07, 2010 6:08 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Laptop Resurrection?

Author:	rustybucket [ Tue Sep 07, 2010 9:50 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Laptop Resurrection?
Holy computation, Batman!

Author:	big_D [ Wed Sep 08, 2010 4:20 am ]
Post subject:	Re: Laptop Resurrection?
Sounds like a badly damaged disk! I hope it does recover the drive and the data - if it does, given the amount of time it has required so far, I'd copy everything off, as soon as it has finished!

Author:	phantombudgie [ Mon Sep 27, 2010 6:32 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Laptop Resurrection?
...1094hrs... ...fed up now...

Author:	rustybucket [ Mon Sep 27, 2010 11:07 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Laptop Resurrection?

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