Laptop took a tumble

Gadgetman496

Laptop (Dell Inspiron N5010) took a tumble from the kitchen counter to the timber floor while in use today :eek:

Anyway, no physical damage but on a re-start it displayed "drive read error". To be expected I suppose The bigger portion of my data is backed up, however, there is a small amount I would like to recover if at all possible. I removed the HDD (Goddamn Dell sure made it awkward to perform a simple task like accessing the HDD on that model) I caddied the HDD to my Desltop and it found the drive and assigned a drive letter but then displayed the Msg "This disk is not formatted do you want to format it now"

I'm wondering is there anything out there that might be able to read it? might Linux be able to read it? I will replace the drive but it would be sweet to get that last bit of data back before it heads for the bin. Any suggestions?

Duggy747

Ah yea, the N5010 is an overkill where you have to dismantle the laptop just to get the drive.

Try TestDisk to see if you can even find any data on it or to see the condition of it. I wouldn't be too hopeful, though.

Skerries

download a linux mint image if you can and see if that sees the disk

Gadgetman496

TestDisk done the job just fine. All sorted.

The initial scan reported that the disk structure was OK.
It took me a while to get my head around its usage but once I did it worked great.

Ill keep a copy of Mint handy too for future reference.

Thanks to both of you for the suggestions.

Now to get a replacement 500GB drive? Any good deal out there?

wheresmybeaver

You might consider replacing that 500gb disc with a smaller capacity ssd. More reliable and faster, but it means you have to change your thinking slightly about where media etc is stored. My recommendation is to have a smallish ssd (60gb to 120gb depending on how much you want to spend) and have the core of your media (music, videos, photos or whatnot) stored externally on a HD, NAS on the local network, cloud storage, or a mixture of the above.

I use a 120gb ssd and keep my most important stuff on there synced and backed up using Skydrive (about 20gb). This means even if the laptop is stolen I'll still have everything bang up to date on the cloud. I also have space left on the ssd for a fair bit of music and photos. All other media is stored on a NAS that I can access over the internet if need be. Its a grand solution!

Gadgetman496

A grand solution it is indeed wheresmybeaver.