Geek Squad Troubleshooting???????????

[Ob1]

my roommates co worker took her pc into geek squad to get it looked at. geek squad stated that the hard drive failed and she needs a new one. now here is where i get confused at there response, they asked her if she wanted them to pull all of the data off the drive by plugging into the motherboard? now call me nutz but r they just feeding her a load of BS to get some mohey out of her? i have never heard of plugging something into the motherboard to pull data off of a failed drive. the only way i know of retrieving data from a failed drive is to send it into one of those co. that specialize in data retrievial and spend a lot of $$$$. so my question is, is geek squad feeding her a bunch of crap? or is this a legitimate option for my roommates co worker to retrieve her data?

i dont know what data she has on there, all i know they called me asking about this and i just wanted to ask the experts if what i was thinking is correct or if i am wrong?

[ComputerNut]

Kinda sounds weird. If the drive has failed, and is inaccessible using standerd methods (hook up to a system and test, connect to an enclosure, etc), typically they would make the offer to send the HDD to one of those recovery centers, even that is pretty expensive (often costs over 1000 bucks).

HTH,
CN

[doctorgonzo]

Is the drive failing or has it failed? Big difference. A failing drive can still have data taken off of it. If it is completely dead, then only a data recovery place could handle it.

[Cricket]

It depends on the type of "failure" they're dealing with. If the hard drive is developing bad sectors you can still salvage info off of it.

Cricket

[Ob1]

i was under the assumption that the drive has failed and was unable to boot, but i will double check on that to verify if its completely failed or if its slowly failing.

[doctorgonzo]

"Unable to boot" may mean that only the boot sector has problems; the data elsewhere could be fine.

[Cricket]

I had a hard drive that had bad sectors in the boot sector and it wouldn't load Windows, but I retrieved my data by slaving the hard drive in another computer.

Cricket

[Ob1]

i just found out that they stated the drive is failing slowly and it doesnt boot up. i will try and take the drive and plug it into my desktop to see if i can still retrieve data off of it. is there anything that i need to do when i hook it up the failing drive to my desktop to retrieve the data? thanx for the quick replies cricket and gonzo.........

this is what geek squad told the chic "your hard drive is screwed up" and then they asked if she wanted to have her data retrieved off this drive and put in a new drive. thats a pretty vague answer they gave her, but she didnt know any better. good thing she knows me and i know where to get to the right answers "PC MECH"

[ComputerNut]

Originally Posted by Ob1 is there anything that i need to do when i hook it up the failing drive to my desktop to retrieve the data?

Not really, if the drive still works, just simply plug it in and you should find it as a secondary drive in my computer.

HTH,
CN

[Ob1]

so when i plug the failing hard drive which i believe is PATA (from 5 yr old pc) into my pc which is has SATA, how do i set the jumpers? do i just leave them on CS or do i switch my sata to master and put the PATA drive to slave? or do i leave my sata drive alone and just connect the PATA drive to the same ribbon cable as my optical drive and set it to slave on there?

[doctorgonzo]

SATA does not have jumpers, so just leave it alone; SATA and PATA are completely different systems. If you have the right 80-wire IDE cable, just plug it into the drive using the master or slave connector and leave the drive jumpered to CS. Otherwise, if your optical drive is on a 40 wire connector and is jumpered as master, jumper the hard drive as slave.

[kstatefan40]

Just make sure the SATA drive is set in the BIOS to be first bootable device (at least higher than the PATA controller). Another thing that might help, if she has XP on it, is going into the recovery console with the XP disk in her computer, and typing chdsk /r or chkdsk /f
(specific information here: http://www.microsoft.com/resources/d...us/chkdsk.mspx ) I'm not sure which it is off the top of my head. If it manages to fix all the bad sectors, you can run fixboot and fixmbr and it is possible that the drive will become bootable again. Once you boot, back up all data as needed. If it won't boot, slave it into your machine and get the data.

[Alfie]

Set the drive on primary ide and configure it to CS,if it's alone on the ide controller,it gets connected to the black end of the ribbonand you're using a 80 wire ribbon.
Leave your sata drive alone.
What devices do you already have connected to the ide controller?
Do you plan to back up on cd or how?

[Ob1]

yeah i figured out that sata doesnt have jumpers after opening my case. duh, sorry about the brain fart. first i just tried to see if i could get the drive to boot on her machine maybe even into safe mode. that didnt happen gave me some error about no disc. so i went into the bios to check and see if everything was set properly and i noticed that the bios isnt even detecting the drive. it stated that all drives were unknown. i double checked the jumpers on the drive and ithey were set to CS and it was the only drive on the ribbon cable and was plugged into the end of the 80 wire. so i tore it out of her machine and installed it into my pc jumpered it to the slave position on the 80wire ribbon. the optical drive i left as CS. i went into my bios and enabled the PATA drive 3 on my system, rebooted and my system didnt detect it, it gave me some error stating: drive 3 not found: parallel ATA, PATA (pri IDE slave) strike f1 to continue, f2 for setup utility. so i shut down the system tore out the optical and changed it to master just to see if that would help, but it still gave me the same message. as soon as the pc turns on the PATA drive just makes a constant clicking and whining noise the whole time.

im planning on backing up the data with a external usb drive that i have. i will try removing the optical and plugging the drive into the ribbon end and setting it to CS. she told me that she has XP on it, so i will also try the recovery console on it. im guessing if none of those work then the drive is completely dead. ill post back tomorrow with the results.

[glc]

as soon as the pc turns on the PATA drive just makes a constant clicking and whining noise the whole time.

The drive is now beyond field data recovery procedures, it needs to be sent to a professional data recovery company for bench disassembly. This starts at about $1000. She should have let the Geek Squad try the recovery while the drive was still being recognized if the price estimate was agreeable, now it's too late. This a very common failure scenario, when it starts doing things like that, it goes downhill fast. I think they were being very professional and truthful in this case - but isn't hindsight wonderful?

You may have one last shot at it before tossing the drive in the dumpster or spending the big bucks. Put it in a Ziplock freezer bag, suck the air out while zipping it up, and put it in the freezer for a couple hours. Take it out and IMMEDIATELY hook it up and try to get it recognized. With any luck, you may have about 5 minutes to go in and get anything that's really important. This procedure can possibly be repeated.