Need some advice here. I have a 3 year old Gateway desktop I use at home. I replaced the hard drive about 18 months ago or so. I tried to re-boot my computer last night and when it started the windows screen comes on for a second then goes black giving me a message that something is wrong with my hard drive and hit enter to continue. So I hit enter and then it tells me to hit F4 to continue. I do and nothing happens. I re-booted two more times, same process. I am leaving it off now at the advice from some on this board. My question now is what to do. My main concern is recovering data. It's possible I have a corrupt boot sector and that needs to be fixed or replaced. My question is, where would you go without getting ripped off. I live in Chicago for any of you locals that might know of someone. Someone mentioned Best Buy will make an attempt to recover any data for $150. If they can't recover anything, they don't charge you. But Zzz recommenced going to a specialist only. So any ideas?
If you have a second computer remove the bad? HD from your Gateway and install it in the second computer. I am assuming the second computer has only one HD. If the problem with the Gateway is either the HD or the HD controller you should be able to "see" the bad? drive. Copy your data. Remove and discard the drive. You can buy a new HD for $100 if you want to keep the Gateway. However, I'd dump the Gateway as well. Depending on your needs, and if you were using the Gateway they don't seem to be exotic, buy a Dell for $500. Even the low-end units they are now selling will be much better than the 3 year old Gateway. On the other hand spend about $1200 and buy an Intel Core 2 Duo. It will outperform most any single chip machine currently available. Good luck in recovering your data. Jack
Thanks for the advice Jack. I do not have a second home computer. I have a computer at work and a laptop at home. No way to really swap hard drives.
I'm afraid to try to boot it again as some are telling me each time I do that it destroys the drive further. I wish I could remember it word for word. Said something about damage to the hard drive. LOL. Sorry I can't be more specific.
Maverick: Remove the HD and take it to work. Ask the IT guys/girls if they can hook it up to a spare machine as a second drive, obviously not on the network. It is a simple task and depending on your company's rules may or may not be allowed. Can't hurt to ask. Jack
you dont want to swap hard drives. you want to put it in as a slave. that way you might be able to see the data without booting it.
My friend had a HD that crashed before. He sent it into some company that helps you recover data. He was able to retrieve almost everything. Unless you are pretty tech savvy, don't try to follow the advice you're getting and risk damaging the Hard Disk more. I would never tell someone who's never installed a HD in his life to "swap a drive, set one to slave". Here are some ads from Yahoo: Hard Disk Data Recovery Tools: 24/7 Help www.dtidata.com Hard disk data recovery is our focus. ITS - Hard Disk Data Recovery Service www.datarecoveryspecialist.com ITS offers fair and honest data recovery services. $375 Expert Data Recovery globaldatarecovery.net Free evaluation. PC, Mac, RAID, Server, Laptop, iPod. Hard Disk Data Recovery www.gillware.com Fixed rate data recovery. No service fees unless successful. Good Luck!
i guess if you are afraid you have to pay but there is nothing to it. simply plug the gateway hd into the spare port on the hd cable of another computer and boot up.