Again with the laptop hdd problems

[Homer_simpson]

my older laptop had recently died, so i 'd bought a new acer aspire one.
it worked fine for one and a half months and then this morning it wouldn't boot up.yes my crappy luck =(
after showing the bios screen it shows :
"
Intel UNDI, PXE-2.1 (build 082)
Copyright (C) 1997-2000 Intel Corporation

For Atheros PCIE Ethernet Controller v1.0.0.13(2008/10/15)

Check cable conncetion..!
PXE-M0F: Exiting Intel PXE ROM.
No Bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key
"

first i checked my bios for the boot sequence and it is set up properly with the IDE being first priority.
theni tried googling my troubles away, and came up empty. then i took out the hdd and connected it to an external usb adapter and tried to connect it to my other computer through usb: my OS(vista) recognized it as an external drive but when i tried to access it it said it's corrupted same thing happend when i tried to run checkdisk on it, and when i checked it's properties it showed empty space and total space are 0 MB.

So sadly i concluded that my HDD is dead.

after trying a few other things(changin IDE to ACHI in bios setup among other things) i've come to terms with it. plus i still have warantee but my Problem is lots of school work is on this HDD.
So i'm wondering if anyone knows of anyway that i could recover this data without emptying my wallet(which is already empty)
any thought are appreciated.

Edit: Also forgot to mention that in the bios setup screen it recognises the name of my HDD as TOSHIBA MK1652GSX ,which is why i was hopeful that i could recover data

[Superskull85]

I would recommend SpinRite but it does have a price tag of $90. I don't know of anything else you could do.

I'm guessing you don't have a backup of your data?

[chrisbrown]

Have you considered booting linux live? It may be a long shot, but that's the first thing I try when I have these troubles. I don't know the dirty details but just from experience, I've noticed that Windows tends to give up at the first sign of trouble (i.e. corruption) but Linux will read whatever it can.

[DtY]

methodoxx @ Fri Mar 19, 2010 11:02 am wrote:

Have you considered booting linux live? It may be a long shot, but that's the first thing I try when I have these troubles. I don't know the dirty details but just from experience, I've noticed that Windows tends to give up at the first sign of trouble (i.e. corruption) but Linux will read whatever it can.

Additionally, if the sector with the master boot record on the drive is the only sector not working, it will not be able to boot off it even though the drive is working perfectly except for that sector. Judging by that message, the mbr is broken (you should get that error from the OS if it was anything else).

You did check the cable right? That fixed my problem last time I thought my drive was dead.

[Homer_simpson]

i see. thx for the responses guys

DtY @ Fri Mar 19, 2010 11:04 am wrote:

methodoxx @ Fri Mar 19, 2010 11:02 am wrote:

Have you considered booting linux live? It may be a long shot, but that's the first thing I try when I have these troubles. I don't know the dirty details but just from experience, I've noticed that Windows tends to give up at the first sign of trouble (i.e. corruption) but Linux will read whatever it can.

Additionally, if the sector with the master boot record on the drive is the only sector not working, it will not be able to boot off it even though the drive is working perfectly except for that sector. Judging by that message, the mbr is broken (you should get that error from the OS if it was anything else).

You did check the cable right? That fixed my problem last time I thought my drive was dead.

ooober noob question: 1)what is mbr? 2)which cable to check?

[ProgrammingFun]

The cable that connects the harddrive to the motherboard (ribbon wire).

Master Boot Record is the part that tells the computer what to boot when it checks for bootable information.

lol, i tried linux live (SLAX i think it was...) and I have to say that it was pretty good

[andrew.]

Try Arch Linux live