Boot the computer that has the bad drive connected to it with the PartedMagic CD/USB that you made
A menu will pop up, please select
1. Default Settings (Runs from RAM)
When it finishes booting you will notice that it looks kind of like a Windows desktop. The button in the lower left works like the START button in Windows XP and allows you to select and run various programs or shutdown the computer. To make things easy, I'll just refer to this as the START button. Now we will use two different tools to gather information about your hard drive in order to determine the best way to proceed with a repair/recovery.
First Tool fdisk
At the bottom of the screen near the START button you will see a picture of a computer monitor. Click it to open a terminal window. In the terminal window type
fdisk -l
(that is fdisk SPACE DASH l as in Linux) and press ENTER
I want to see the information that it prints out. See this section for how to get the information to me.
Click for full size
(This is a picture that was taken with a cel phone camera)
Second Tool Disk Health
You can close the terminal window once you have collected the information from it and proceed to open the DISK HEALTH icon on the desktop
This will open GSmartControl.
Click for full size
(This is a picture that was taken with a cel phone camera)
Click on the bad drive to highlight it and click DEVICE>VIEW DETAILS to open the Device Details window.
Click on the PERFORM TESTS tab.
Make sure that the Test Type is set to Short Self-Test and click the EXECUTE button
I will need to know if it passed or not. Here is a picture of one that failed.
Click for full size
(This is a picture that was taken with a cel phone camera)
Next click the ERROR LOG tab and let me know if there are any entries and if there are let me know what the rows say. Here is a picture of a bad drive with 5 rows of errors in the Error Log.
Click for full size
(This is a picture that was taken with a cel phone camera)
Next click the ATTRIBUTES tab. I'd like to see all the values but if you are writing them down manually, the most important for me are the RAW VALUES for ID's 1, 5 and 197 as highlighted in the picture below.
Click for full size
(This is a picture that was taken with a cel phone camera)
How To Get The Information To Me
Here is a list of the information that I need about your hard drive in order to determine the best way to proceed with a repair/recovery.
- The output from running fdisk
- The output from Drive Health
- Did it pass the Short Self-Test?
- Any entries in the Error Log
- The Attributes list
- Write it down and then type it into your reply to me.
- Take pictures and post them like I did for the pictures above. As long as the text is legible, it is fine.
- Access the internet from within PartedMagic and use Firefox browser to post results. If using a wired network connection, you should be automatically connected. If using a wireless connection, click the network icon near the clock in the lower right corner to configure your wireless connection.
- Save as a text file to a USB flash drive or another drive besides the bad one. If you want to do this but aren't sure how, ask me for details.
Now remove the CD and shutdown the computer
Click START>LOGOUT and choose SHUTDOWN THE COMPUTER and click OK We don't want to stress the bad drive any so if it is an external disconnect it. If it is internal, make sure that you do not write anything to it.
Click here to return to the Data Recovery troubleshooting flowchart