Recovering from a complete crash. Can't start Vista at all.

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amy55407 · #1 Post by **amy55407** » Fri Nov 09, 2007 9:12 am

My T60 crashed while I've been out of town. I won't be home until tommorrow afternoon so I won't be able to do anything until tommorrow but I want to get on this the minute I get home.

Nothing is different about the laptop. I haven't installed anything new. I started it and is said, I'm sorry I can remember exactly, that I needed to do check disk. It found several errors. I let it run but when it started to boot I got a blue screen saying the drive was unmountable. Then it went into the black start screen where you have the option of starting in safe mode, etc. I tried everything but it keeps cycling through the blue and black screens. When I press the thinkvantage button, I can get to the rescue and recovery screen but then nothing happens.

Is it possible the hard drive got jostled and isn't seated properly? The blue screen says to use the Vista disc to try to repair the OS. Is that the first thing to do or should I use the recovery discs I made after I got the laptop? I fortunately backed up my drive recently but if I can recover the drive without having to reinstall everything I might prefer that.

I've never had this happen with a computer before so I want to go through recovering the drive as logically as possible.

Thanks much.

#2 Post by **carbon_unit** » Fri Nov 09, 2007 9:40 am

The first thing I would do is run a hard drive test and see if it is defective. http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-56222
If the drive passes you will need to find a Vista dvd and run a repair from there.
If it does not pass you will need a new drive and some recovery discs. Lenovo will provide them for free if you are still under warranty.

amy55407 · #3 Post by **amy55407** » Fri Nov 09, 2007 10:56 am

I was afraid it might involve a new hard drive. I'm also under warranty. Out of curiosity, if I do need a new drive, is Lenovo pretty good about getting them shipped out asap?

#4 Post by **carbon_unit** » Fri Nov 09, 2007 11:38 am

Test it first and if it is bad call 1-800-426-SERV, tell them the test results and they will overnight you a new hard drive. Be sure to tell them that you also need the recovery discs at the same time. They will (should) be free with a hard drive replacement. They will not be free if you call later.

amy55407 · #5 Post by **amy55407** » Sat Nov 10, 2007 7:49 pm

I ran some of the diagnostics (wasn't exactly sure what I was doing) and the surface test had a lot of failure errors. They're sending out a new drive and thanks for the tip about asking for the recovery disks. They didn't even really ask me a lot of questions or what the errors were.

Unfortunately they won't send it out until Monday and it may take until Wednesday. I wish I had asked my question here earlier in the week. Even out of town I could have bought a cd and done the test. I would have had the drive by now. Oh well.

Thanks for the info. You spared me from wasting a lot of time trying to figure out what to do. I'm glad I've been in the habit of backing up my hard drive and will do it more now.

Speaking of which. I have a couple of external notebook hard drives. I could probably pull one out of the case and put it in the thinkpad until Wednesday, but maybe I should just wait.

#6 Post by **carbon_unit** » Sat Nov 10, 2007 9:39 pm

I'm glad you found out what was wrong and your new drive and recovery discs are on the way. Good thing you keep backups. Most people don't until something like this happens and then they are cryin' the blues. It usually takes a major data loss to get people to start backing up, it did for me.

amy55407 · #7 Post by **amy55407** » Tue Nov 13, 2007 10:17 am

The hard drive is going to be delivered today!! The recovery discs haven't been shipped yet and may not arrive until Friday. I'm not sure how I should handle this. I have a complete backup of the failed drive that I made with Acronis True Image. If the backup actually worked (I've heard of Acronis not working when you most need it) I'm assuming I can recover with that.

Apart from liking the idea of starting fresh is there any reason not to recover from the backup?

K0LO · #8 Post by **K0LO** » Tue Nov 13, 2007 12:39 pm

None at all. For best success with Acronis True Image and your ThinkPad, remove your bad hard drive and install the new, blank hard drive in its place. Boot from the Acronis rescue CD and restore the image to the internal hard drive.

If you have a full-disk image that includes the recovery partition then the restoration should put everything back in place.

Look at it this way -- you have nothing to lose by trying this on a new hard drive. If it doesn't work then you can always just put your old disk back and wait for the recovery CDs to show up and do it that way.

amy55407 · #9 Post by **amy55407** » Tue Nov 13, 2007 4:07 pm

My hat is off to Acronis. It worked. My backup was done on Oct. 19th so I did lose about 2 weeks worth of work but that's a lot better than losing everything. Starting from the recovery disks would have been an opportunity for a clean start but I can always choose to do a clean reinstall at a time I choose.

I was wondering if there are any issue disposing of a crashed hard drive in terms of data retrieval. Whenever I've sold a computer or drive, I've used software to overwrite the drive multiple times. Is it possible to retrieve data from a crashed drive?

K0LO · #10 Post by **K0LO** » Tue Nov 13, 2007 5:04 pm

It may be possible to retrieve data from a crashed drive with great effort, but it's probably not worth worrying about.

You could try one of the following two ideas:

1. See if the manufacturer of your drive has any diagnostic software. Try to completely reformat the drive with a low-level format. Maybe it can be brought back to life. If it can you can write zeros to all sectors and resell it or keep it for a backup.

2. If it's hopeless then use of a hammer will insure that nobody will be able to recover your data.

#11 Post by **carbon_unit** » Tue Nov 13, 2007 5:29 pm

I wonder what IBM would say if you passed a big magnet over it.

That would obscure your data fairly well. Chances are that if you can't recover your data no one else can very easily. Of course any drive can be recovered if you want to spend enough money unless you shatter it. In which case IBM will send you an invoice for that hard drive they sent you.
At least you got the recovery discs for free.

amy55407 · #12 Post by **amy55407** » Wed Nov 14, 2007 11:36 am

I was thinking a drill but a hammer would be more convenient and easier.

I'll probably bring it to our local hazardous waste site but I just want to be fairly sure that if someone fishes it out that data won't be retrievable. I'm pretty sure it's dead although Lenovo didn't ask me to do any other testing after I told them about the error codes I got running PC Doctor and that I couldn't boot from the Vista CD (I also tried booting from a Windows XP disc I have and it couldn't see a drive).

I'm probably being a little paranoid. There probably wasn't much of interest to anyone but me on the drive anyway. I have just read about people who buy or find in the garbage drives or computers to get data.

Carbon-unit I think you're probably teasing but I'm certainly not trying to get away with anything.

Thanks for all the help. This is an invaluable forum.

K0LO · #13 Post by **K0LO** » Wed Nov 14, 2007 12:37 pm

amy55407 wrote:Carbon-unit I think you're probably teasing but I'm certainly not trying to get away with anything.

He may not have been! When the hard disk on my X41 died, Lenovo replaced it but required me to ship the bad unit back to them. Before you smash your drive it would be worth checking to be sure that they really don't want it returned.

#14 Post by **ryengineer** » Wed Nov 14, 2007 3:03 pm

amy55407 wrote:snip....I couldn't boot from the Vista CD (I also tried booting from a Windows XP disc I have and it couldn't see a drive).....snip

You need to switch HDD settings from SATA to Compatibility mode in the BIOS.

#15 Post by **carbon_unit** » Wed Nov 14, 2007 3:22 pm

k0lo wrote:
amy55407 wrote:Carbon-unit I think you're probably teasing but I'm certainly not trying to get away with anything.
He may not have been! When the hard disk on my X41 died, Lenovo replaced it but required me to ship the bad unit back to them. Before you smash your drive it would be worth checking to be sure that they really don't want it returned.

I wasn't implying anything at all. But K0lo is right, you will need to send the hard drive back intact or they will send you a bill for the one you received. That was probably your only chance to get recovery discs for free so you might as well have them.

amy55407 · #16 Post by **amy55407** » Wed Nov 14, 2007 3:50 pm

Wow, thanks for the info. They didn't tell me I needed to send it back when I initially talked to them. I called just now and indeed I do need to send it back. It did seem odd to me that they would have sent a new drive so readily without getting more information. I see now there is a return sticker in the box but I didn't even look at it.

I hope it's not problematic if in fact the drive could have been recovered. I did what I could to test it and technical support didn't ask me to do anything else, like what ryengineer said about changing the hard drive settings in the BIOS.

I must say though, that I was very happy with the speed in which they picked up the phone calls and responded to the problem.

#17 Post by **carbon_unit** » Wed Nov 14, 2007 5:03 pm

As long as you did what they asked you to do you are OK. Send it back in the same box they sent one in with the return sticker on it.
It's a good thing you didn't hammer that drive. They don't sell them as cheap as newegg does.

Recovering from a complete crash. Can't start Vista at all.

Recovering from a complete crash. Can't start Vista at all.

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