Hard Disk Crash! Critical Situation. Need help from Experts. :(

[Vyom]

Its been like a month since my computer is not booting, due to the hard disk crash. (which I hope it isn't).

The Problem:
When I power on the computer, after BIOS, an error comes,

Unknown Flash Type
Boot from CD:

A disk read error occurred
Press Ctrl + Alt + Del to restart

I also hear a "click click" sound, from the hard drive, on a few intervals.

My Uncertainties:
If hard drive has crashed beyond repair. And if I can recover my data from it? Forget Movies, Softwares.. I have about 4-5 GB's of documents lying in last drive (G: ) of the disk.
I also doubt whether running scan disk from a boot disk can make the disk worse, or have the potential to correct it.

Steps which have I tried:
Boot from UBCD, and tried to access the drive. But drive doesn't show up in My Computer. But, it shows in Computer Management. So it IS detecting the drive.

Now don't know what to do, need suggestions. PLEASE Help!
It's the worst phase of my life. :'(

[sygeek]

1. Download plopbootmanager.
2. Write it to a disk.
3. Boot with that disk on your computer with the crashed drive.
4. Select to boot with the primary partition.
5. If your computer successfully boots up, you're HDD is good to go.

Post back with the results for further steps.

[Vyom]

OK. Got a mere 320 KB file from the downloaded zip! Will try to boot from the CD after burning this iso.
But assuming the disk is correct, shouldn't the disk must be seen in UBCD! I'm worried.

[sygeek]

Originally Posted by vineet369

OK. Got a mere 320 KB file from the downloaded zip! Will try to boot from the CD after burning this iso.
But assuming the disk is correct, shouldn't the disk must be seen in UBCD! I'm worried.

Yeah, it's just a small 3rd party bootloader.

[Vyom]

Ok. I mounted plopbootmanager on a CD, and tried to boot from the CD. It was Windows 7 installed on my hard drive. So after 10 min of "Starting Windows" message, right when the login screen should appear, it re-booted.

I don't know if I can get boot from the hard drive, I just want to take Back-Up of my documents..
What would be the best way to do that, so that I don't mess up the drive further??

[sygeek]

Originally Posted by vineet369

Ok. I mounted plopbootmanager on a CD, and tried to boot from the CD. It was Windows 7 installed on my hard drive. So after 10 min of "Starting Windows" message, right when the login screen should appear, it re-booted.

I don't know if I can get boot from the hard drive, I just want to take Back-Up of my documents..
What would be the best way to do that, so that I don't mess up the drive further??

Your harddrive's screwed up, connect it to another computer or use a recovery utility to recover the data.

[Vyom]

So, can you recommend any good way to recover that. I want just a small portion of data, and not entire hard disk's content.

Spoiler:

God! Just let me have my data please!!!