600x Travelstar HD Prob

[Abbondanza]

I dropped my 600x thinkpad with a travelstar 6 GB HD in it, and when I tried to boot it, it comes up with the Windows 2000 loading screen, gets about 5% into it, then starts clicking and stalls there...does anyone know if there is any chance of recovering the data on this drive? When I remove it it sounds like there is something 'loose' and jiggling around in there....maybe the reading head broke loose? Can I buy equivalent brand and size drive and do replacement 'surgery'? Any other ideas?

Thanks for any advice in advance!

[Bruce Guttman]

It's possible that during the fall a head crash occurred and wiped out part of your disk.

The simplest solution is this:

1. Boot from the Windows 2000 CD, then go into Recovery Console. Then do a SCANDISK to see if any files are corrupted.

2. Shut down, then reboot from the Windows 2000 CD. Ask it to do a REPAIR INSTALL, which should replace any bad files. Using the SCANDISK first will mark the sectors destroyed by the head crash as bad, so it won't try to use the bad area again.

Once your system is running, copy all your important documents to another drive.

Hope this helps.