Hi,
My friend has a DELL Desktop. He is not that computer literate, and sometimes I can hold my own, although I do not have a DELL, but a Compaq. He said that when he started his computer up, it sounded like an airplane.

I'm guessing a hard drive. He says he sees the DELL start up, then a prompt for F1 or F12 , Menu is gray. Then sees "Hard drive-0. Unknown." But no Blue Screen. Can not use the mouse and tower is making a ticking noise.

I asked him if he could get to Help and support to maybe go back to system restore,but he can not.

Before I go over there, just wanted to know what tasks I should try to get his computer up and running properly again. He has all his work projects, and Quick books that he's afraid he lost, and understandably freaking out. Any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thank you! :-)

I would go over there and see what it's doing and then if needed take the HDD out of it and fit it in yours (don't boot from it) and see if you can read from it.

sounds like a hard disk head crash , i bet it clicks like crazy


there are only 2 ways to recover data from a hard disk with crashed heads
1) pay for pro data recovery (they take 500$ minimum)

2) the old freezer trick, this doesnt always work and requires another (working) hard drive , the idea is to put the hard drive in zip-lock bag and put it in the freezer for at least 24hrs (even a little more) and then quickly reconnect it (if the bios identifies it, dont boot from it,instead boot from the other hard drive that have an os on,or boot from a bartpe/slax cd) then youll have about 20mins or so to copy all the important data to the other hard drive (this trick is nothin permanent ,it does not fix the hd ,when the time is out it will be..dead again, in case there wasnt enough time to copy all the data you can try freezing it again it could work sometimes) , some ppl suggest puting the drive in an external enclosure after taking it out of the freezer for quicker access , might wanna read how this trick worked for others http://geeksaresexy.blogspot.com/200...over-data.html

do not attempt to open the hard drive down to the platters level , that will just make things far worse and could even make it harder for a pro data recovery company to recover the data

Thanks,
The HD would just click and never boot into windows. We replaced the damaged PATA 20 GB with a new 300 GB hard drive,but the Dell System or Motherboard was not able to handle the whole 300 GB amount, so we used what was allowed...only 60 GB of the 300. What a waste of space! This Dell was way out of Warranty. So now we have to find a DATA recovery place to get some of it back,and not charge an arm and a face. Thanks!

check dell's site for bios updates , it could make it recognize the full capacity , another way to use the full capacity is to buy an ide controller card (promise & siig are the best brands) , sorry to dissapoint you but all data recovery companies charge 500$ mininum so it will defintly cost alot of $$ to get it recovered , on the other hand you could try the freezer trick i mentioned ^ it works in some cases , and just FYI warranty doesnt cover data loss

heres a list of data recovery services to get you started , in general data recovery companies tend to archive all the recovered data in multi-part RAR archives and burn em to dvds or cds depending on what the person chooses , some will even put the data on another hard drive but of course they will want it shipped back after the data from it was copied

http://www.ontrack.com/ (have branches worldwide)
http://www.cbltech.com/ (have branches worldwide)
http://www.drivesavers.com/ (based in california)
http://www.salvagedata.com (based in stamford, connecticut)
http://www.disklabs.com/ (have branches in the uk/netherlands/new zealand)
http://www.dataclinic.co.uk (based in manchester,uk)
http://www.dataemergency.co.uk/ (have branches in dallas/houston/washington/london/brisbane)
http://www.newyorkdatarecovery.com/

Look like it's time for partition tools...

BTW, many HDD manufacturer have some kind of free partition/repair/data recovery tools.

Edit, a simple virus can also f**kup drives partition table. It should be enough to visit the lokal computer repair.

@pinto2 your way off , some very old motherboards have issues detecting the full capacity of big hard drives, some have 64gb limit & others 137gb , a bios update can fix it in some cases but not all

Yeah easterbunny...

When it comes to old computers and big HDD's your answer is 48bit LBA...
Both BIOS, chipset, OS and HDD must be able to support it.

Linky to useful tools.

BTW, even my almost 6 years old Intel 815 system supports 48bit LBA.