Failing Hard drive-can anything be done?

[obiboba3po]

Some of you probably noticed my absence from xfire recently, either due to me or my computer being sick. Obviouslly, as the title sugests, I'ts not me who has a dead hard drive...

Basically my question is this - my laptop (dell inspiron 1525, vista if anyone needs to know) will not start up by most means possible (attempts to boot it from seperate CD have been made, etc.) We've (being me and my uncle who works for IBM) tried just about everything and have concluded that dell needs to be called so we can send the hard drive back to them. trouble is, about 200+ hours of modding, etc. is on that computer, and i really want to know if there is any means of recovering it. again, to summarize, my computer will not start at all, claiming it has disk errors and what not and before we call dell to find out how to send it back (they may be able to recover it but i doubt it), is there any means of recovering my lost work? (that being just about everything i've posted on gt within the past year)
Thanks for any help

[Frisbeetarian]

I've heard that putting it in a freezer works (for about a day). Make sure you have an HD to dump it to when you're ready; in the situation I heard about, they had about 6 minutes before the HD failed after a day of freezing.

[obiboba3po]

I've heard that putting it in a freezer works (for about a day). Make sure you have an HD to dump it to when you're ready; in the situation I heard about, they had about 6 minutes before the HD failed after a day of freezing.

really? that seems so absurd but work-able at the same time. i'll look into it thanks..

[Teancum]

Dump any sensitive data now, because you never know when the drive will fail.

[Master_Ben]

And for the future, back up your work regularly. I hear and know Inspirons are notorious for hard drive fails; the one I had that my Mom uses now has blasted through two hard drives.

[obiboba3po]

And for the future, back up your work regularly. I hear and know Inspirons are notorious for hard drive fails; the one I had that my Mom uses now has blasted through two hard drives.

2 Hds? yeowch
tean-what exactly did you mean by sensitive data? (couldnt find a straight definition on google/wiki lol)

[501st_commander]

tean-what exactly did you mean by sensitive data?

Important, cant live with out kind of data..?

[Xavious]

tean-what exactly did you mean by sensitive data?

Important, cant live with out kind of data..?

Sensitive data is the data you don't want other people to get ahold of. Personal information, credit card numbers, etc.

[obiboba3po]

tean-what exactly did you mean by sensitive data?

Important, cant live with out kind of data..?

Sensitive data is the data you don't want other people to get ahold of. Personal information, credit card numbers, etc.

thats what i figured i just wanted to make sure. that would include stored passwords to websites, etc. (where you tell the browser to remember the password) right? that's the only really personal info. and i will take those measures immediately.

[Teancum]

I was actually using sensitive as a broader term. Basically anything that you feel like you gotta keep. I wouldn't worry about things like saved passwords and whatnot. Once a drive is dead nobody wants it anyways, as it costs several hundred dollars to get data off of it, and nobody really has that sensitive of data.

[obiboba3po]

I was actually using sensitive as a broader term. Basically anything that you feel like you gotta keep. I wouldn't worry about things like saved passwords and whatnot. Once a drive is dead nobody wants it anyways, as it costs several hundred dollars to get data off of it, and nobody really has that sensitive of data.

true and we just found out that dell is shipping me a brand new hd that will be here in a few days. i had in mind that we may be shipping this one off to them thats why i mentioned stored stuff.
and i had quite a lot of stuff on there that i would like back, the tech support man gave us a number of a company that does it for a large price, i dont really know any opinion on this, is it worth it? (prbly a few hundred dollars)

[Xavious]

i dont really know any opinion on this, is it worth it? (prbly a few hundred dollars)

That's something only you can decide. If you think the stuff you want to save is worth a few hundred dollars, go right ahead.