Serly, stuck. [HDD fail.]

[syntax_error]

Ah, so here is how the story goes:

1) my younger sister dropped my laptop [sony aw series] while it was still turned on
2) the screen went blank, just the backlight was on.
3) everytime I restart power goes to the laptop and the sony logo comes up but then it says could not load OS
4) I tired to get many different small Linux OS's to boot off either my USB or my CD bay but most didn't work till I used SystemRescueCD [Linux]
5) now form the terminal it is telling me my HDD is not available

So the above is to paint the image, I am looking for any sort of way to get to my data as many of the essays that are due this year are on it including my ToK, world lit, math profolios and such.
If anyone is taking HL English you may understand my pain and the value of those lit papers.

Any advice, is greatly NEEDED.

Note, I dont care to get to the larger files like all the games, music and movies I have, simply all the word, excel, and pdf files


FYI: to all those who are going to say anything along the lines of 'backing up your data etc', the irony is I was getting an external HDD that weekend to house my growing media collection.

edit: for a better title.

[DtY]

Try running spinrite, I've heard of it taking up to a month though.
If that doesn't work, try photorec to recover files off it. It wont have the filenames though, you'll have to grep or something.

[cwarrior]

use a software called
recover my files
download it

[OneOffDriveByPoster]

If software does not get you far on your laptop, you can take the HDD out and put it in a USB enclosure.
There are compact ones that work with notebook drives.

[Tony]

OneOffDriveByPoster @ Thu Oct 08, 2009 12:43 pm wrote:

you can take the HDD out and put it in a USB enclosure.

And then he would have a broken HDD in an enclosure...

The problem with non solid-state drives is that they have moving parts that could get seriously damaged when dropped and in motion. The recovery would depend on what exactly was damaged. Sometimes data could still be read with clever software; other times the hard drive might have to be physically rebuild...

[jernst]

I'd say your more or less screwed. I've tried to recover files from hard drives which aren't damaged, but the partition information was erased or other problems which prevented os from booting up and recovering the files easily. You can find some tools in linux that will do the job, however they arent quick. I'm guessing the process may be even slower and more tedious with a (physcially) broken hard drive, if its even possible at all. Like Tony said, it depends on what is damaged.

[andrew.]

Take the hard drive out of the laptop and tap the side where the head would be. Put it in a USB enclosure and try it. You may have to shake it or something to get it to spin. This worked when my hard drive failed.

[zero-impact]

This article might help you out. It sounds to me like the section on physical damage would be most relevant. I think you will probably have to pay for a specialized drive recovery service if you have any hope in seeing your files again. However if you are not willing to spend some big $$$ I have heard of some last ditch efforts to get the drive spinning one more time, such as putting the drive in a freezer for an hour of two. The success of those methods though seems unlikely and depends entirely on the severity of the internal damage to the drive.

I hope this helps in some way.
Best of luck!


EDIT: http://www.drivesaversdatarecovery.com/