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I think my laptop's HD has crashed. When I turn it on, it makes a "click-click" sound before giving a "Operating system not found" black screen (whilst booting into Windows 7). So I have booted up the laptop from Ubuntu on a USB. Two questions:

  1. Am I correct in concluding an HD failure?
  2. Is there any way to recover my files by using bootable USB Ubuntu? Can I view files on my HD? I can't seem to be able to find anything that looks like my HD in /media or /dev and Wubi (which is the only Ubuntu I've used before) has a /host folder that links to your Windows partition.

Thanks in advance. Hope I can recover my files somehow.

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migrated from stackoverflow.com May 2 '11 at 0:27

1 Answer

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If you click on Places in the ubuntu menu and see if your HD is listed there you might be able to mount it and recover some stuff. The reason I doubt this might work is because of the clicking noise, usually a hard drive clicking means that the read/write head(s) are bad.

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This is Ubuntu 11.04 and I don't see a Places icon in the Ubuntu menu (in fact, it doesn't have a menu like in 10.04). Any other places I could check? I know the clicking sound is a bad sign, but this has happened once before (a couple of months ago), and I was able to boot into Windows after leaving it turned off for a bit. – Jayraj Jog May 2 '11 at 0:49
You can open a random folder (sorry I dont' use Unity) like your home folder from the side bar and then on the left hand side it should show available drives. But yes I recommend either cashing in your warranty or replacing the drive even if it is in a laptop they are very easy to replace. – Jesus Ramos May 2 '11 at 0:52
Hmm...I don't see my HD in the list of available drives on the left. I guess if it was operational at all, it would've showed. Thanks. – Jayraj Jog May 2 '11 at 17:14
Yeah you're drive is screwed pretty much :\ – Jesus Ramos May 4 '11 at 4:12

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