Hard drive repair with free software
Contrary to popular belief, if a computer won’t boot due to hard drive damage, not all data is lost and the hard drive may even be repairable. There are two types of hard drive damage. One can fix it and the other requires a professional data recovery installation.
Physical Disk Damage: Physical damage is the worst. Data recovery can only be done by professionals and can cost up to $ 1,500 (sometimes more). Physical damage usually consists of faulty actuator arms, damaged platters, or fried driver boards.
Non-physical disk damage – Non-physical damage (NPD) is what we are going to discuss in this article. NPD occurs when the file system of the operating system (fat or ntfs) gets corrupted due to improper shutdown (for example). While this damage may seem really serious (if it prevents you from starting your PC), it can be easily repaired with some software that is already included in any Windows PC and a USB external hard drive enclosure.
Here is a list of items that you will need to follow the instructions below:
Another computer running Windows XP, Vista, or Windows 7
Find out what type of hard drive you have. There are 2 types. SATA (small flat connector) and PATA (also known as IDE) which has a connector with approximately 30 pins. An external USB hard drive enclosure with a connector for the type of drive to be connected (you can get one of these from BestBuy for about $ 50 USD).
Follow the steps below to perform a non-physical repair (software repair) on a non-bootable hard drive.
1. Remove the drive from the computer.
2. Connect the hard drive to the connector on the USB box.
3. Connect a USB cable from the enclosure to the running computer.
4. Turn on the USB box.
5. An external drive is probably loaded in your list of available hard drives. You can view this list by opening “My Computer” or “Computer”. Make a note of the drive letter of the external hard drive.
6. Now it is time to load a program called CHKDSK (Check Disk).
7. Click Start (if you are on Windows XP) or click the Windows balloon (in the lower left for Vista and Windows 7).
8. In Windows XP, click RUN, then type CMD. In Windows Vista and 7, type CMD where it says “Search programs and files.” This will open a black command prompt window.
9. At the command prompt, type chkdsk “the drive letter you want to verify”: / r and press Enter. So here is an example of chkdsk g: / r and then hit the enter key.
10. This process can take hours. I’ve had a few that have taken days.
11. If this command completes successfully, your drive should be sufficiently repaired for you to recover data and you may be able to reboot from it.
One word of warning. If your disk has any errors (bad sectors), it has reached the end of its useful life and should be replaced as soon as possible. You will be able to see this in the report provided by the chkdsk command at the end of your scan.
