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I recently had a problem with my laptop. when I booted up the machine, I would get a SMART failure error message and when I pressed F1 to continue, it would take a very long time to boot and it would come back to the same error message again.

Thinking that my hard disk was dying, I bought a new hard disk and installed on my laptop and so now my laptop is alright.

However I need to recover data from that old hard disk, so I bought an external hard disk case and placed the old hard disk onto the case and connected to my laptop with USB.

The first few times when I connected, I could see the files from the old hard disk and managed to copy some files over although it took extremely long to transfer. But now whenever I connect to the old hard disk, after a few minutes, my laptop will crash and re-boot.

Do you think my old hard disk is dead beyond repair? Or you can offer some help here?

Any assistance would be appreciated!

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  • When it crashes - are there any trace of the problem left in system logs?
    – dtlussier
    Sep 1, 2010 at 13:14

2 Answers 2

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It sounds like it's close to be gone (or even gone now). A professional data-recovery company might be able to get your data back.

Though, if you like the experiment a little, you could use a Linux-LiveCD and try to copy data from there. Linux handles errors differently from Windows, so you might have a chance to copy data from there.

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AS @Bobby says, it sounds like it is in bad shape. I have had some luck with placing the drive in a "zip Lock" type bag with as much air removed as you can and then placing it in the freezer for a few hours. Even a day.

Remove and connect while cold and see if there is any change.

This does not always work but it is easy and costs next to nothing.

The pros can use more advanced methods and will often not charge if they cannot recover but there is a significant cost.

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  • that's interesting to know. will give it a try. thanks!
    – Gnot
    Apr 23, 2010 at 15:04
  • Like hundreds of dollars...
    – Nathaniel
    Apr 23, 2010 at 17:13
  • last time for us it was thousands
    – Dave M
    Apr 23, 2010 at 18:12

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