Dell Laptop HDD failure

[avid-dreamer]

So I have this Dell Inspiron N5110 I7 laptop and the HDD decides it wants to take a dump all over me, Dell diagnostic show a hard drive failure and I have confirmed that, well its not completely dead it still just manages to boot windows but no functionality from there on..... So I contacted Dell support and they sending a techy in to replace the HDD, the problem is..... this laptop is designed so badly that you actually have to dismantle evry single thing to get to the HDD . My stuff is not backed up and I risk losing 600GB worth of data, Dell support suggested I take it in to Incredible Crapnection so a certified tech can open the laptop, take out the hdd and try and back up what ever they can since thers no way of acessing the drive through windows now, not even the recovery disc will help cos the hdd is stuffed. I can easily go in to IC and pay for a backup but i rather keep my pride and technical prowess thank you very much. So I came up with a crazy idea that should help me attempt to try and save what ever I can. If I boot linux from external media I should be able to access the stuffed up HDD from the linux file manager and try and back up my stuff to one of my other PC's over a network or use my external. If anyone has any other solutions that would be very useful to me right now

 

[GreGorGy]

I did that as recently as last week. You may want to try a clone - Clonezilla Live CD - and see if it will clone the fried HD - it may work (doubt it though). Just a few days ago, I booted a live CD, connected a USB external and

cd /Volumes/Fried/
cp -r * /Volumes/USBExt


Recovered about 60%. You can also see where the recovery fails if you rather

cp -r * /Volumes/USBExt > /Volumes/USBExt/copy.log

 

[Electron1]

Use hiren's boot cd from www.hirensbootcd.org then boot into minixp and you can use unstoppable copier

 

[ponder]

Linux livecd and if you still can't copy the data off it image the drive with GNU ddrescue.

 

[avid-dreamer]

Thanks guys will try each solution to get the best recovery, i probly wont need to get evrything back but i hope the important bits are able to copy over.