Okay guys. I'm new around here, and was hoping someone could help me out. My younger brother dropped my harddrive while I was visiting my parents yesterday, and now it will not boot in to Windows. To be more specific, he dropped it, I ran 3 hours worth of error checking on it. A couple of games seemed to be okay, but overall stuff wouldn't work. Among the programs that wouldn't load after it getting dropped was Crysis, and while it was unpleasant that I'd have to lose all my saved games, I decided to uninstall and reinstall it. Well, I blue-screened while uninstalling, and have been unable to get into Windows since. So I popped that HDD into this computer (backup rig) and can see the majority of stuff on there. The fall was off of a 2 1/2' stool, so it wasn't a super big hit, and I'm hoping the headers just bumped along it corrupting the data, but not rendering the drive unusable. Is there any way I could back up what IS retrievable and reformat that HDD and continue to use it? Or is it pretty much junked now?
If it's received a knock then it is likely to have a shorter life, even if the data is OK right now. It all depends upon your outlook on life and part availability. The disc is probably not that expensive, compared with yr time and value in getting it reinstated. Maybe a lesson in leaving something delicate where it could be compromised. If you can recover the data, it's best to do it quickly - the longer it runs the greater the likelyhood of failure. Try to secure the drive so no movement can compromise it.
