Resurrect A Broken Hard Drive!

So you thought your old laptop hard drive, the one from your broken laptop, was dead forever - but "just in case", you decided to go ahead and store it away on an old bookshelf somewhere. What you might not realize is that there is a chance you have a 150GB to 500GB asset, just waiting to be recovered.

First off, I'll tell you, there's a slim chance of recovering those files - at least, not without days of running a recovery program. However, if you are pulling out an old HDD from a long time ago, there is a slim chance you actually need the information off that drive anymore, anyways. If you are willing to lose the information off the hard drive, here is a quick fix to resurrect the hard drive and put it to good use.

First off, determine whether or not there is even a possibility of recovering the drive. The first step is to jog your memory a bit. When the hard drive died or stopped working, did you hear clicking or grinding sounds? If so, the best thing to do is get out your hammer and release some tension by destroying the hard drive. This is because that clicking or grinding sound is a result of physically broken pieces inside the hard drive. Without FBI top-secret government technology at hand, you can most likely expect to never recover an ounce from that drive.

Determining The Possibility

If, however, the hard drive does not emit any weird sounds when plugged in, then there is a really good chance you can recover it! This can be very useful as either a second or third internal drive, or as a portable hard drive. THe best best is to buy a really inexpensive external USB hard drive case, such as off eBay. Make sure you get the right type - SATA is the type for most laptop hard drives.

The next step, after connecting the hard drive externally using a USB hard drive case, is to basically destroy the filesystem entirely. What this means if that you are essentially cleaning out the drive of all data and starting fresh. If you are a Windows user, this could appear to pose a really big problem for you. Here are some of the possible issues you may encounter in Windows:

a) Hard drive will not connect - nothing shows in "Computer" (Vista or Windows 7) or "My Computer" (XP)

b) Hard drive shows up, but if you try to right-click the drive and choose format, it either hangs there forever (hours), or it quickly comes up with an error

c) Hard drive looks like it works, but gives random issues and doesn't appear to save data properly

d) Hard drive shows up in Windows, but as an unknown or unusable device

Essential Background Information

Basically, none of these are an issue. The first thing to know about Windows, is the build in "Disk Manager", which is Windows' built-in disk management and partitioning system. The second thing to know is that it is crap and 70% of the time you should not use it, and the other 30% of the time, there is a faster and more efficient alternative.

Next thing to know is a real solution to disk management. Note the difference between "disk", which is storage such as a hard drive, and a "disc", which is media such as a CD or DVD. This real solution is called GParted, a free, open-source disk management program, which I have found to be one of the best free programs for the purpose. I don't usually like naming names or promoting software, and if it ever becaome not-free I suggest to find another program.

Continuing With Your Hard Drive Resurrection

Now, first step is to choose how to run GParted. basically, you have the choice between CD or USB. I suggest CD if you have a CD or DVD drive, because it is more widely supported for booting than USB. If you choose CD, then download it from the GParted site at Sourceforge.net: http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php
The direct link to find the newest Live CD version is here:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/gparted/files/gparted-live-stable/

It is important to know what a Live CD is. A "Live" CD means that it will run as an operating system even if you didn't have an operating system installed on your computer. The reason we want this in this case, is because we are going to boot our computer directly from the "Live CD" of GParted, so we can bypass Windows and use a more effective program to resurrect our broken hard drive.

It is also important to know what an .iso file is. Any CD or DVD you put in your CD/DVD drive, such as your Windows operating system CD/DVD, has a filesystem on it called an "image" which contains the data and files. In order for this "image" to be "run" when you place the CD or DVD in your CD/DVD drive, this "image" needs to be constructed in a way which can allow it to play automatically. Basically, this is done by containing the image of the disc in an .iso format.

Thus, make sure you download the file ending in .iso from Sourceforge.net, using the link above.

Properly Burning/Mounting Your Live CD

In order to properly make the CD so that it boots with your computer when you start your computer, you must burn the CD image correctly to the disc. If you do not burn it correctly, it will not work and you'll have to just throw away the CD.

The easiest way to burn an .iso image to a CD is using nanother one of my favorite free programs, called MagicIso. This is downloadable from the MagicIso site, which is here:
http://www.magiciso.com/download.htm

MagicIso gives you an option to pay for extra features, but we don't need those extra features. Just go ahead and download and install the FREE version, that's all we'll be needing for this task. Once you've installed MagicIso, just insert your CD, locate the .iso image of GParted which you downloaded earlier, and click to burn the CD image to the CD.

IMPORTANT: Burn the CD at the slowest possible speed! You can choose the speed 1x, and MagicIso should automatically adjust if your CD burner does not support burning at 1x speed.

Prepare To Run The Live CD

Insert the Live CD in your CD drive.
Make sure your old drive to be resurrected is connected (USB)
Reboot your computer.
Your computer should automatically boot into the Live CD instead of Windows.
If not:
When your computer starts to reboot, before Windows starts, press F12 (or whatever will bring up the boot menu), and choose to boot from the CD drive.


Resurrect Your Hard Drive

Once you have booted into GParted, you should see a screen which looked kind of like Linux.
Wait until GParted finishes reading your drives, which might take several minutes.
Choose your old drive from the top right menu.
Right-click the area showing the size of your old hard drive, and choose to Delete everything.
Then click the green arrow saying to make those changes.
If you did this correctly, you should see your old hard drive as having the entire amount of the dirve as colored gray, and it should read "unallocated"

Next, right-click the space which reads "unallocated" and click "Create". This is where you will choose your filesystem.
If you plan on using this in Windows, then I strongly recommend to choose "NTFS", which is the file system for Windows. If you plan to use this in BOTH Windows and MacOSX, then choose the filesystem "Fat32", which is readable by both Windows and MacOSX.
Click the green arrow which says "apply" and wait for it to finish. It should not take very long.

Hopefully at this point everything has worked out, and if so, you now have a perfectly functioning new hard drive to use as either internal or external! Congratulations!

Feel free to leave a comment if this helped you, or if you have a question or need help.