Unmountable Boot Volume, can't repair

If you have your HD accessible, try to give it a knock, like a door knock. I know someone who was able to recover a lot of disks that wouldn't spin by making it start like that. If all is done before that, it is worth a shot.
 
bihus said:
If you have your HD accessible, try to give it a knock, like a door knock. I know someone who was able to recover a lot of disks that wouldn't spin by making it start like that. If all is done before that, it is worth a shot.
Click to expand...

hmmm, maybe I'll give it a "whack", literally :D

If someone on here knew they could get the data off I would pay them to do it ;)
 
Other option would be to change the HD boards, if you had a similar HD, or knew someone who did.
 
bihus said:
Other option would be to change the HD boards, if you had a similar HD, or knew someone who did.
Click to expand...

Is this pretty easy to do? Because if it is I would be willing to buy the same HD (they have it here at my local Office Max) and give it a try, if it is certain to work.
 
Well, after reading up on this, it seems the HDs must have the exact same firmware and since my HD is a year and a half old, the new one at Office Max is probably updated, although the model number is the same.

So I guess I'll throw this piece of junk in the freezer for awhile. Don't have much confidence in that, but what could it hurt? It's already nothing more than a paperweight :cry:
 
Find the "Ultimate Boot CD", download and burn the ISO, it will allow you to repair boot sectors. There are also a number of Linux based live CDs that will allow you to do this, or to mount the windows volume and transfer important files somwhere else.

Another thing I have done in the past is take an HD out of another computer, set it to master and the faulty drive to slave, boot it up then browse the filesystem of the disk with the bad boot sector, save files and reformat, or use the boot sector repair tool.
 
here's a more detailed guide to one of the processes I outlined:
How to Repair the Boot Sector:
If XP won't start it may be due to a damaged boot sector or a missing or corrupt ntldr or ntdetect.com files.

To replace damaged ntldr and ntdetect.com you can copy fresh files from the XP CD using the COPY command. Boot with the XP CD and enter the Recovery Console (as above). At the Command Prompt type the following (where "X" is your CD-Rom drive letter) allowing the files to overwrite the old files
COPY X:\i386\NTLDR C:
COPY X:\i386\NTDETECT.COM C:

To repair a damaged Boot Sector at the command prompt type FIXBOOT and press Enter. Then answer "Y"
Click to expand...
 
zenkidori said:
Find the "Ultimate Boot CD", download and burn the ISO, it will allow you to repair boot sectors. There are also a number of Linux based live CDs that will allow you to do this, or to mount the windows volume and transfer important files somwhere else.

Another thing I have done in the past is take an HD out of another computer, set it to master and the faulty drive to slave, boot it up then browse the filesystem of the disk with the bad boot sector, save files and reformat, or use the boot sector repair tool.
Click to expand...

I was hoping my problem was that easy, but when I set this drive as a slave to my new hard drive (and when I tried it at work), it wasn't even recognized meaning that it's not the boot sector that is damaged. I think all the data is fine, but the board is probably shot.
 
zenkidori said:
you can always perform a platter surgery :shock: :shock:

it's a joke, don't do that.
Click to expand...

Well, if I had an identical drive, I would try switching the baords, but I don't know if I can find an exact match.
 
jeffy777, all data is gone. Move on.

Seriously there is no way to recover unless you're willing to spend thousands.

If you're just worried about Top Gear archive and ur mp3 archive, those can be recovered easily with the help of this forum. If you want ur porn back, I'm sure some of us can help too.

But in reality, it's always a good idea to store things on a different drive, one that you can trust like a seagate.
 
^ sorry to say that you are right. i fortunately saved a lot of it on CD's. Now we have an external for all the important stuff. If that 160gig WD external fails me, i'll kill myself :shock2: we've got 77 gigs worth of info on it.
 
yea i'd die if i lost my data. but like i said before, i saved my mp3s, pictures, and softwares like office/photoshop/winxp on another computer so that i should be saved in case of any failure. And i save my data on slave hdds. My master hdd basically keeps my porn and some really random stuff. If i lose my porn, i guess i hvae to find a real woman.
 
AxlxA said:
jeffy777, all data is gone. Move on.

Seriously there is no way to recover unless you're willing to spend thousands.

If you're just worried about Top Gear archive and ur mp3 archive, those can be recovered easily with the help of this forum. If you want ur porn back, I'm sure some of us can help too.

But in reality, it's always a good idea to store things on a different drive, one that you can trust like a seagate.
Click to expand...

hehe, no porn. I have a wife for that :)

I know I got lazy and didn't backup as much as I should've. I even have a bunch of blank DVDs laying around, but my only excuse is laziness. The PC was running great for almost a year, so I was caught off guard.

I had some important financial stuff on there and some web site projects, which could be replaced with hard work......but it sure would be nice to have them back wihtout doing it all again. Plus pics from my digital camera that can't be replaced, as well as a bunch of my wife's word docs. Everything else can be downloaded again.

If I had some extra cash, I would consider these guys:
http://www.nationwidedatarecovery.com/

They claim to do it for under $500, much cheaper than thousands.

Maybe I'll do it eventually......... :(
 
Don't you know anyone that may have the same HD? It's worth an email to your friends... It would be cheaper for you to buy another HD for them, even bigger...
BTW, I've never done it, but if you already found some info on it, you may have found some tutorial, too.
Good luck.
 
From what I've read, most say it has to be the exact same drive with the exact same firmware. If you search ebay for an 80 GB Western Digital, you'll get all kinds of different model numbers. So it's really tricky to find precisely the same model since they are constantly coming out with new ones.
 
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