Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with computer and harddrive

What are these plastic rails on my hard drive called?

billybunny — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 11:43:26 -0800

What are these rails which snap into the side of a hard drive and allow it to slide into a bay called? And also, where can I get some more? My computer's case has absolutely no identifying information, and hell if I can remember who the manufacturer was 5 years after I bought the thing. I tried going into a computer store to get some more, but I couldn't even figure out what I was trying to buy, let alone if they'd have any of them!

Does my hard drive have permanent issues?

R a c h e l — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 21:05:00 -0800

Can I remove a partition and use my hard disk as normal? Rather long explanation... So, my original problem would be best explained by this older question I asked.

Basically, my vista partition stopped booting one day, with a couple error messages when I attempted startup recovery, the most significant (I think) being "system volume on disk is corrupt". Does this mean there is a part of my hard drive that has been messed up? I've never been too gentle with my laptop, and I have dropped it 3-4ish feet onto carpet more than once (yes, I know how terrible that it. I'm completely aware).

I'm determined to use this until it refuses to turn on, though. I mean, I also cracked the screen and am losing real estate all over at a fairly constant rate. An external monitor helps with that, though. At any rate, I'd like to install a copy of windows 7 that I just bought (I've been using the beta, which I've had since March, and likes to tell me it's counterfeit frequently. This was installed on a different partition from Vista, and has worked fine since Vista stopped.)

So, in installing the copy of Windows 7, I would like to give it a bit more room than the current Windows 7 partition of 20gb. Vista has 200gb, and everything I need on there has been backed up. I know fairly well how to erase the vista partition, grow the Windows 7 partition, etc.

My question is, will I run into problems because of whatever caused the Vista failure? Is there a bad sector or something that will give me grief? Is there some sort of formatting I can do before installing windows 7 to sort of start over with the disk? (There is absolutely nothing on this computer that is not backed up that I need.)

I'm sorry for the long explanation, with probably plenty of extraneous information. Thanks very much for your help!

Dying drive?

Dee Xtrovert — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 19:30:34 -0800

Is my hard drive dead? Can I save it, at least long enough to back it up? I have a 500GB Lacie external harddrive. And a Mac with OSX. When I turn it on, the blue "on" light flashes, but never stops blinking (which it does when it's fully on.) It clicks every four seconds or so, the same clicking noise it makes if one turns it off manually. What could the problem be? How best to save the info on it? I back everything up, it had just been a while for this one.

Mystery noises and BSOD on my newish Acer Aspire One netbook. Am I screwed?

tealsocks — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:47:12 -0800

Mystery noises and BSOD on my newish Acer Aspire One netbook. Am I screwed? I bought an 11.6" Aspire One at Staples about a month and a half ago, and the night before last it started making a clicking sound followed by a beep which I can only assume is coming from the hard drive. Sometimes this sound is followed by a blue screen of death and sometimes i can just pick the computer up and it goes away. Is this the sound of a hard drive failing? I carry my netbook around a lot, but it's always in a padded laptop bag so I'm pretty sure I haven't damaged it in any way. Do I need to get a replacement?

Hard drive reads a lit-tle too regularly.

Lord Fancy Pants — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 11:41:39 -0800

My hard drive reads data like clockwork. Really! What's going on here? Usually a hard drive when it reads something sounds random:

BRRP, BRP brp e drp. . .clackity clackity clack brp brp brrrrp.

But periodically my computer slips into this very rhythmic mode and the hard drive reads something small every second on the second. It's so rythmic you could almost time an egg with it:

brp. . .brp. . .brp. . .brp. . .brp. . .brp. . .

I think it slows my computer down so I might want to do something about it. I know millions of computers must do this because just about every computer I've owned or used over the past several years has this "feature."

Is this a "virtual memory" thing? A house keeping function? Does any computer maven out there know what this extremely rythmic read is?

Hard drive trouble?

R a c h e l — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 17:59:55 -0800

Hard drive(I think) corrupted - I'm drowning in information. Help? I'm sure this has been addressed elsewhere but since there are so many different problems that happen with computers/hard drives/etc, I'm having a lot of trouble differentiating.

Me: HP Laptop, running Vista and an expired beta of windows 7 on different partitions. Also have a recovery partition installed by HP but that's just the OS and stuff, not my stuff. I almost always use(d) Vista, and all my files are accessible from there.

Problem: Vista only starts up partway,then gets stuck with a blank screen (after the "Windows loading" screen). I eventually power it down, turn it on, and the computer suggests I try startup recovery, which fails.

Oh: a note: my dad may have been the last one to turn on my computer before this happens, and he said it said something about installing an update (I think he said a service pack, but there hasn't been a new one recently - why would this be installing now? I usually just let the automatic updaters work their mojo, don't pay too much attention to it, so I can't provide more detail, sorry)

In the 'details' section, the two tests that startup recovery said failed were Unknown bugcheck: Bugcheck 50 (with some parameters listed - I can provide those if it's helpful) and then it said repair action: system files integrity and repair. Result: failed. Error code: Ox2

Then, the other "root cause found" by startup repair was "System volume on disk is corrupt. Repair action: File system repair (chkdsk) Result: completed successfully Error code: OxO

It tells me that startup repair failed. If I power it down and start again, the same thing happens.

Windows 7 works fine, if that's relevant.

So, my question is multifold(Is that a word?): Can this be repaired? Can I recover my pictures etc on my harddrive (yes, I know I should have backed them up, was actually external harddrive shopping the day that this happened)? I have another, legal, copy of Vista. Can I install that(after recovering my data)? About how much will data recovery cost?

Thanks so much, this is my first Ask MeFi question so I'm a little nervous. Do let me know if I did anything wrong!

How do I figure out if I've lost all my data?

droomoord — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 18:19:43 -0800

Yesterday, my portable hard drive got knocked over while it was being read from and began making a vicious gurgle. My husband unplugged it before I could try to disconnect it. When I turned it back on, it's still sounds terrible. As I am currently not backed up, my brain is refusing to really approach this, and I'm drawing a total blank on what to do next. I'm very attached to this data.

No video input detected on bootup.

TimeTravelSpeed — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 10:45:01 -0800

Computer froze completely during a game, all subsequent downloads of various installer files were corrupt. BSODs galore. Now, when I turn on my computer, no video input is detected whatsoever. Next step? This problem sounds like a combination of a virus, hard-drive failure, and video-card failure, so I'm not sure what to try next. Any suggestions?

Approximate timeline of events from last Friday night, to Saturday morning:

0. Built a near-top-of-the-line computer 3 months ago
1. Friday, started a game Team Fortress 2 using the Steam client (I play this all the time).
2. An hour or so into play, the entire computer froze, game audio was on a 1-second loop. Couldn't even CTRL+ALT+DEL
3. Performed hard reset, tried to defrag, but it stopped progressing after about 20%.
4. Tried to launch Steam again but was told a game file had been corrupted. Uninstalled Steam.
5. Downloaded latest Steam installation and ran it, but was told the installation was corrupt
6. Uninstalled Avira anti-virus, downloaded Avira installer, ran it, and again was told installation was corrupt.
7. Same results with Adaware installation. However, Spybot installation was successful (no results from SB scan btw).
8. Rebooted and immediately got some sort of "NTLDR, unable to boot" error. Hard reset fixed this.
9. Was able to reinstall Avira and begin a full virus scan. 3/4 of the way through, scan stopped progressing and got a BSOD.
10. Now, when I turn on my computer, I can hear the whirring and humming of the internals, but no video input is detected by the monitor. Neither resetting monitor, nor replugging video cable helps.

I haven't touched any of the physical internals yet (e.g. re-seating video card), but will try that tonight.

I tried to keep this brief, so some details may be missing. Let me know if you need clarification.

What do I need to look at when buying a new laptop?

reenum — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 09:28:05 -0800

I'm in the market for a new laptop. Should I get a PC or Mac? What specs are important for me to look at when making a decision? My Toshiba Satellite A65 seems to be on its last legs, so I think I'm getting a new laptop.

In researching, I've become confused as to which specs really matter when looking at a computer.

Here's what I would use it for:
- E-mail, IM, and Web
- Watching DVDs
- BitTorrent
- Word processing and spreadsheets
- Tracking my finances
- Some music creation (mostly breakbeats)

I've seen some places say that I need as much RAM as possible, others stress the importance of a large hard drive, yet others say I need the fastest processor.

Also, any recommendations as to brands that are more reliable than others?

Please help!

PC won't recognize my HD.

reenum — Mon, 04 May 2009 07:14:21 -0800

My computer is having problems with recognizing capacity of hard drives or recognizing the drives at all. I have an old Dell desktop tower. It has a 1.8 Ghz processor and 384 MB of RAM. I use it mostly to store my music and surf the web, so it doesn't need to be top of the line. It has a 40GB drive, and a second hard drive my dad installed.

On Friday, I tried to replace the existing second HD with a 250GB drive. When I started up the unit after replacing drives, the computer wouldn't boot. It kept asking for a boot disk.

So, I swapped the original drive back in. As I was putting that drive back in, I noticed that it has a listed capacity of 120GB. However, when installed, the computer shows it as being a 40GB HD.

I'd like to have more storage on my computer. So, is there a way for me to get this PC to recognize the full capacity of the 120GB HD or to boot up with the 250GB HD?

How do I get my files from Point A to Point B?

reenum — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 15:10:14 -0800

I need to move several gigs of music files from one external hard drive to another. But, there are a few problems... I have a 250GB WD HD in an enclosure and recently bought a WD Elements 640GB drive. I now want to back up all my music files from the 250GB to the 640GB drive. They total about 33GB.

Problem is, my computers do not have USB 2.0 drives. Every time I begin the backup process, it goes for a while, and then terminates due to an error in writing from the 250GB drive.

Is there an easy way to do this backup?

My computer is having some difficulties.

Brachiosaurus — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 00:16:26 -0800

Is my iBook G4 dying? The most pressing problem is that, while working on it, without the power cord, the computer will abruptly turn off, with no warning. It can even be when the battery indicator on the top of the screen isn't even that low, maybe a quarter left. Afterwards I can just plug it in and turn it back on with no problems. This is happening more and more regularly.

The next biggest problem is that the front (closest to me) left corner gets super hot sometimes. I'm guessing that this is hard drive. I've backed up my data recently but I should probably again- maybe right after I'm done typing this.

Also, the wires within the power adapter may be starting to fray. It isn't too touchy but to keep the indicator light illuminated I have to keep it still. Also the box thingy that goes to the wall will get really, really hot while it's charging- but not if it's just plugged in. I don't know if it's always done this.

The only other problem is that four keys no longer work on the keyboard thanks to my cat spilling a martini on the computer about 2 years ago. I should have replaced it then because I can do it myself and I've heard that the replacement keyboard would only be about 50$. All of the letters still work (though I imagine that it would be funny if I had to avoid words with certain letters) and only one of the keys that I tend to use has been effected. I called Apple to ask them once but they said they don't sell just the keyboard.

So I'm looking at about 300 in replacement parts (outside of the hot hard drive problem, 'cause I don't know what that's about) and I'm thinking that even if I repair these and the thing lasts 8 months my utility per dollar wouldn't improve that much because I'm spending 20% of the cost to get another ~15% of life from it.

I choose 8 months because it would be awesome if I could get this thing to last until I finish school in Dec.

So it sounds like I should just replace it but I don't think I'd be able to swing that for another 2 or so months and I kind of need it (what I mean by need is that my roommate lets me use his spiffy iMac but having a laptop [and my own computer] improves my productivity).

So I guess my questions are, can this thing last 2-3 months without putting money into it? 8+ months without repairs? 8+ month with the repairs listed above? And how much would a new 100gb HD cost? Has anyone had this battery problem before? I know that none of you can predict the future but I just need some reasonable advice.

Broken external harddrive

Nickel — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 14:41:35 -0800

External hard drive fell off table, have I lost all my data? I tripped over the power cord and yanked my external hard drive from the table onto the floor and improperly ejected it from the computer (mac). Now when I plug it in and the computer recognizes that something is there, but it won't show up as an accessible drive in Finder or My Computer. I've tried on macs and pcs. My mac tells me that the hard drive is unformatted but the repair button is shaded out. Is there anything I can do to get the data?

Help me, Oblue One, you're my only hope!

IAmBroom — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 14:40:44 -0800

Bad drive... but I can read files from it! My 750-GB drive has gone wonky, and I'm trying to save the data on it. Some of it has been transferred, some files won't go, but no matter what, after about a few hundred MB have been moved, the drive starts refusing to answer, and needs to be powered down & reconnected. Rebooting the computer itself doesn't help, unless the external 750-GB HD is "rebooted", too - which means that's the only part of the reboot that mattered.

But here's the weirdest part: even the files that can't be moved nor copied can still be accessed. I can't move a particular VOB file, for instance, but I can watch it on video software!

OK, I just read this recent thread on the Blue, and used the suggestions of using SpinRite and HDTune, to no avail. I also ran CheckDiskGUI several times, which implicitly runs chkdsk. Various bad sectors have been found & corrected (supposedly). HDTune found 3 of the first 7 blocks were damaged; after that, *every* block was marked damaged (which is probably the unresponsive drive problem I mentioned above).

Any clues as to why I can access files, but not move them? Or any direction how to save my GB of stuff? Help!

Computer hardware: In Over My Head

kurtroehl — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 19:07:13 -0800

Help a poor fool fix his computer. New motherboard has only one IDE slot. Have two old hard drives and two old CD drives. What to do? I clearly no expert at building computers, but a friend built me one several years ago, and I decided to upgrade it when my video card started malfunctioning. This was most certainly a bad idea, but I did it anyway.

The problem is, I ordered a new motherboard that I thought was exactly what I needed, but unlike my previous one it has only one IDE slot. I was using two old-ish hard drives (Western Digital, 40gb and 100gb), and two old-ish CD drives (one ASUS and one Plextor CD-R). Obviously, this leaves me without the use of 2 of the drives (wasn't obvious to me at the time... I didn't know what SATA was, still don't to some extent).

So I guess my question is, should I buy a new motherboard with 2 IDE slots, or more likely upgrade some of my drives to SATA? If I do buy new drives how would I go about transferring the data from the old ones, or making one the boot drive? I don't have a Windows disk anymore.

I would assume that I should buy a new HD, transfer data onto it and designate it the master drive, and then use the ATA cables for the CD drives. But I don't really know what I'm talking about, so some advice is needed and will be much appreciated.

Which USB Mass Storage Device is which?

msbrauer — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 16:19:26 -0800

How can I change the generic name "USB Mass Storage Device" in my Vista system tray "Safely Remove Hardware" dialog? It's not uncommon for me to have a couple of external harddrives plugged in to my Vista laptop alongside a memory card and an mp3 player. While all of these devices have unique drive letters and unique names in windows explorer (one of the drives is always called 400gig, for instance, another is always called 500gig), they're all called "USB Mass Storage Device" in the system tray's "Safely Remove Hardware" menu. So when I need to unplug one but not all, I find myself taking a stab at which device is which and usually I pick the wrong one. I can solve the confusion easily enough by opening the "my computer" window and figuring out the drive letter from there, but that's an extra step that I'd love to get rid of. Ideally, the dialog would always say something like "Safely remove 400gig - Drive (x:)" and stay the same for each device each time it's plugged in.

So, is it possible to change the menu options from "Safely remove USB Mass Storage Device - Drive (x:)" to something unique for each device?

Need help with a computer diagnosis.

amyms — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 14:39:52 -0800

Computer Diagnostic Help and Interpretation, Please: My son inherited an 8-year-old Dell Dimension L933r from his grandpa. It had been upgraded to Windows XP and had an additional hard drive installed. It was working smoothly for us for almost a year, but recently it went into an infinite reboot loop (which we couldn't resolve ourselves) and we took it to an independent computer repair guy (details and questions inside). The computer repair guy (who came highly recommended for his competence and fair pricing from the guys at my son's favorite independent video game store) said that the C drive was "fried," that "nothing can be recovered from it" and that the CD/DVD drive is "shot" (which is apparently why we couldn't solve the infinite reboot problem with the Windows recovery disc - the machine couldn't read it) but he said that the additional hard drive (which is the E drive) is "fine" and that he can "put it into a new machine and fire it up right away"...

Now, my problem is, I'm conversant enough in computer terminology to have a casual conversation, but when confronted with a computer repair guy who answers nearly every question with a firm "Nope, that's not an option, sorry" I'm not sure how to move forward.

So, my question to AskMefi is: When he says that the C drive is "fried" does he truly mean that absolutely nothing can be recovered from it, no way, no how? (My son so badly wants to believe that he can figure out a way to do so - and he also thinks that his grandpa had the computer configured so that everything on the C drive was automatically backed up on the E drive. If so, would the computer guy see that and would he tell us if he did?)...

The computer guy only charged us $15 for his time in rendering a diagnosis (which was more than fair), but he also pushed pretty heavily for getting us to agree to put the E drive into a "new machine" (which he wanted to sell us). We ended up bringing the tower home and telling him we'd think about our options. I guess I'm just wondering what those options might be (beyond what the computer guy is pushing for) and should we seek a second opinion?

If you need any additional information to be able to answer my question, I'll be away from the computer intermittently, but
will check back as often as I can.

How do I boot off of someone else's internal hard drive on my laptop?

senterstyle — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 19:00:13 -0800

Running XP on my computer, off of someone else's internal hard drive I'm trying to clean up a friend's desktop from a nasty virus infestation, so I snagged his hard drive out of the case. I am using an adapter to connect it via USB, but was wondering if there is a way to virtually (or perhaps boot off of) this drive. I know that it would be incompatible with my hardware, but I wanted to run some more things from my end, rather than driving to his home. He has XP.

To format or not to format a drive with important files on it

mjklin — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 09:33:53 -0800

Please help me figure out whether or not to format an unformatted hard drive that still has data I need on it. Dear Mefi,

Posting this for my brother, though I'm the one actually doing the work. His computer died after someone from [cable company] tried to hook up a DSL line to it. Windows wouldn't start at all.

I took it back to my place and reinstalled Windows XP. Everything seemed to be fine, and I even copied his Word files, mostly comedy material from his radio show, from the old "My Documents" folder to the new one. Everything ok, right?

Wrong. When I took it back to his place, on bootup I got "Insert system disk and press Enter to restart". No Windows detected. When I booted from the Windows install disk, it read the hard drive as unformatted and wanted to format it.

I've tried booting with both Ubuntu and Knoppix live CDs, and neither will go past the introductory parts. I also tried several boot disk utilities, and none of them will give me anything but a DOS prompt on R:/, created in the RAM. I cannot change to any other drive.

The problem is the Word files. He needs them. I would just go ahead and reformat the C:/ drive and reinstall XP, but I need to know if there are any other options. Should I just reformat and worry about data recovery later? If you listen carefully, you can hear the sound of me kicking myself for not backing the files up when I had the chance.

Complicating the issue is that this is a super-small Acer TravelMate C100 with a super-small IBM Travelstar hard drive, model IC25N030ATCS04. It doesn't fit in any other computer I own, so I can't just pop it in somewhere and test it out.

Thanks a bunch MeFi - I've already wasted a weekend on this, and it's really getting to me!

Why does my 60 Gig HD show 12.5 Gig capacity?

zalary — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 18:42:35 -0800

Why does my Lenovo ThinkPad T60 running Windows XP 60 Gig HD show 12.5 Gig capacity? Screenshot of the weirdness: http://screencast.com/t/5wUUE5BORI

I needs my data.

reenum — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 09:15:46 -0800

My external hard drive seems to have stopped working. Is there any way to get my data off of it and onto another drive? This past weekend, I fired up my external drive and heard a loud clicking noise. It was as if the drive was trying to spin up, but getting stuck. The setup I have is a 250 GB WD hard drive inside an Adaptec enclosure. I'm running Windows XP SP3.

Now, the clicking noise is gone, and the drive barely spins.

I have a lot of data on this drive, such as MP3's, documents and other ephemera of my life. I'd like not to lose it.

Short of spending thousands on a data recovery service, is there anything I can do to fire up the drive long enough to get all my files off of it?

Tell me about current NAS manufacturers and technology?

loquacious — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 04:53:34 -0800

Tell me about Network Attached Storage ( NAS )? In particular what current manufactuers should I avoid for a typical 1 terabyte (or greater) RAID array? I'm also interested in general information and pitfalls for NAS devices and implementations. Deployment is for a mixed platform small office - about 8 seats. Platforms are XP, Vista and OS X.

I'm assuming SAMBA protocol for shares. Usage is low to medium - the office needs a data/file server for storing and reliably sharing typical office documents.

They emphatically do not need an actual server. There's no forseeable upgrade path to an in-office Exchange server or domain controller or the like - this is handled by a remote office through VPN. I could build them a PC-based solution using something like FreeNAS but that would be overkill, and I don't want to introduce a possibly flaky desktop/server into their office.

What NAS models or manufacturers are considered the most reliable? Best support? Best value?

Much thanks in advance!

Help me backup my system.

arniec — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 09:39:08 -0800

Data Backup Filter: I have about 6TB (yes TB, not GB) of data. I need to back it up BEFORE it crashes. I also need a good way to share it on the network. How can I do this? Details within... Yes, this topic revisited again. None of the questions asked so far have helped in my situation.

It seems the era of digital video and digital audio has created a storage nightmare for me. I have 6TB of data spread across 5 external hard drives (3 500GBs and 4 1 TBs, not all full). They are all currently connected to a Windows PC.

I have 1 blank 1TB drive which I just attached to my Mac Mini as I'm trying to retire my Windows PC and migrate all data to the Mac FS so I can run it off my Airport Extreme's USB port (the Airport Extreme won't read NTFS).

I've looked at "mirroring" my external drives nightly using a backup program but this does not safeguard me in case of electrical storm, fire, angry wife, etc. Besides, there must be a limit to the number of external drives I have...I'm running out of outlets quickly.

But I cannot imagine putting all of this information on DVDs, the time and expense would be insane. Online backup systems are not optimal as there is sensitive personal data in the files and I don't trust the privacy of online backup solutions, but the cost for 6TB is prohibitive.

I do have a lot of "redundant" files that I am attempting to clean up (previous hard drive crashes in my Windows PC resulted in panicked "copy off all my files!" moments, and as such I'm sure at least 1TB of my data is redundant, but the time it's taking me to sort this out file by file is crazy). Are there any programs (Windows or Mac) that can find these and only back them up once, saving me on DVDs?

Do I have any other options besides "buy a lot more external hard drives"?

Moving old data to a new drive

Zaximus — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 12:19:50 -0800

I am upgrading my PC and I have questions regarding transferring my data. This is probably a total newbie question but I can't seem to find a straight answer anywhere. I will be installing a new motherboard, CPU, graphics card, RAM, and 640GB hard drive into my case. I am planning on doing a clean install of XP and SP3 onto the new drive.

Once the new system boots up, I want to plug in my old 160GB HD (also SATA) and pick off all the files I want to keep, which would mostly be several gigs of music and the entirety of the My Documents folder. The old drive also has XP installed on it.

As long as I ensure that I boot up from the larger, newer HD, this should work fine, correct? Is there much risk involved in this process? If the total amount of data to be transferred is less than 10GB and I don't need to clone the entirety of the old disk and old OS, is there a safer way to go about this?

Thanks in advance.

How can I get data off a bad hard drive?

deafmute — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 23:28:11 -0800

I am having a very unusual problem with my hard drive and CANNOT recover any data from it after trying numerous methods. Please help me with your technical expertise. A few weeks ago the hard drive for my Dell Inspiron 1520 became unable to boot into Vista after freezing suddenly. When trying to boot, I get a BSOD with the error message "Stop: c000142{DLL Initialization Failed} Initialization of the dynamic link library winsrv failed. The process is terminating abnormally." When attempting to launch startup repair, boot into safe mode, or boot off of several different Vista DVDs I am greeted with a cursor (that I can control) on a black screen that never goes anywhere.

I ran Dell's built-in diagnostic program, and after being given several hard drive related errors, Dell (very quickly) sent me a new hard drive. Now I need to send them the old one, and I would like to recover my data from it before wiping it and sending it back.

I first put it in an enclosure and connected it to Vista, but Vista does nothing more than prompt me to format the drive.

I then ran Spinrite, which, after 27 hours(!) of operation returned no bad sectors or errors of any kind. What's unusual, however, is that my old drive does not exactly match my new drive in terms of partitions. The data partition is flagged as being too large for the size of the drive, and I am advised to change my BIOS's "understanding" of the drive (which I can't do). It is also missing a partition labeled as "hidden CTOS memory dump". I have no idea what this means.

I then booted off of a Knoppix cd and attempted to mount the drive there. I was able to mount the two partitions containing Dell's hidden diagnostic and recovery data, but Knoppix was unable to recognize the existence of a third partition containing my data.

Google searches have proved inconclusive (particularly in the case of my BSOD error message). Please help me get my data!