Trying to access my hard drive

[compuser147]

I recently dropped my laptop and on startup I get the message "Operating system not found". I am fearing that the hard disk was damaged. The Disk is a Hitachi Travelstar HTS541060G9AT00.

I have removed the Hitachi drive from the laptop and attached it to an enclosure so I can attach it via USB to my other laptop which is running Vista premium. However the disk does not show up on "my computer" when I plug in the USB and connect it. When I right click on my computer and click "manage" and then disk management the drive appears to show up as "disk1" "unknown" "not initialized". When I try to initialize I get the continual error "The Device is not ready".

I have all my old files on this disk and I'm wondering am I doing something wrong in trying to access it or does it appear to de damaged beyond the point I can access it.

Any help would be incredibly appreciated as I'm tearing my hair out having lost all my data.

GM

 

[Lexluethar]

Sounds like the hard drive has been damaged beyond repair. The write head has probably been damaged. There are moving parts within the hard drives that if damaged, can only be recovered by completely dismantling the drive and reading the platters with special equipment.

Depending on the amount you are willing to spend, I would chalk this up as a lesson learned in backing up your files on a regular basis and move on. Professional file recovery can cost upwards of 600 dollars.

One of the many examples of why you should backup files at least once a week on removable media. File corruption, destruction, virus's, etc can destroy all of your files within seconds.