OT: Help - disk crash
Hi all, My wife's (Toshiba Satellite 1130, WinXP) laptop has gone legs-up. Sometimes manages to partly boot, sometimes not. I'm unable to determine whether it's the hard disk, or something in the motherboard, or both. (She's had the laptop 3+ years). Can anyone please suggest someone in Hamilton who can try to extract her Thunderbird account data from the disk? (The rest doesn't matter too much, but the email archive is critical). We can afford a reasonable fee, but definitely can't afford to dump hundreds or thousands of $$ into a lengthy disk recovery attempt - just a quick qualified "It's stuffed" at worst, or a USB stick full of rescued data at best would suffice. I'd do it myself but I don't have the hardware here, since the laptop HDD doesn't have a standard IDE or SATA connection. I tried booting the laptop from a 'buntu live disk, but am unable to mount the disk from within Linux. Cheers David
hi from what i recall it is a standard ide drive in a thin silver box, with a cool plug, you will need to remove these then it will IDE just fine good luck, if you need more help i may be able to offer assistance, depending on time and whatnot Cheers Andrew On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 11:13 PM, David McNab <david(a)rebirthing.co.nz>wrote:
Hi all,
My wife's (Toshiba Satellite 1130, WinXP) laptop has gone legs-up. Sometimes manages to partly boot, sometimes not. I'm unable to determine whether it's the hard disk, or something in the motherboard, or both. (She's had the laptop 3+ years).
Can anyone please suggest someone in Hamilton who can try to extract her Thunderbird account data from the disk? (The rest doesn't matter too much, but the email archive is critical).
We can afford a reasonable fee, but definitely can't afford to dump hundreds or thousands of $$ into a lengthy disk recovery attempt - just a quick qualified "It's stuffed" at worst, or a USB stick full of rescued data at best would suffice.
I'd do it myself but I don't have the hardware here, since the laptop HDD doesn't have a standard IDE or SATA connection. I tried booting the laptop from a 'buntu live disk, but am unable to mount the disk from within Linux.
Cheers David
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I have a USB adaptor for laptop IDE drives if you'd like to give that a try. Its been awhile since I used Thunderbird, but I do remember that its not a simple case of copying the data to a fresh TB install via the FS, you'll need to do some sort if export/import. Gible On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 12:14 AM, Andrew Crosby <electrogeek(a)gmail.com>wrote:
hi
from what i recall it is a standard ide drive in a thin silver box, with a cool plug, you will need to remove these then it will IDE just fine good luck, if you need more help i may be able to offer assistance, depending on time and whatnot
Cheers
Andrew
On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 11:13 PM, David McNab <david(a)rebirthing.co.nz>wrote:
Hi all,
My wife's (Toshiba Satellite 1130, WinXP) laptop has gone legs-up. Sometimes manages to partly boot, sometimes not. I'm unable to determine whether it's the hard disk, or something in the motherboard, or both. (She's had the laptop 3+ years).
Can anyone please suggest someone in Hamilton who can try to extract her Thunderbird account data from the disk? (The rest doesn't matter too much, but the email archive is critical).
We can afford a reasonable fee, but definitely can't afford to dump hundreds or thousands of $$ into a lengthy disk recovery attempt - just a quick qualified "It's stuffed" at worst, or a USB stick full of rescued data at best would suffice.
I'd do it myself but I don't have the hardware here, since the laptop HDD doesn't have a standard IDE or SATA connection. I tried booting the laptop from a 'buntu live disk, but am unable to mount the disk from within Linux.
Cheers David
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As far as I've seen, laptop hard disks all have the same connector, though certain makes/models have an extra adapter that fits over the pins in the computer to provide the connection (my Compaq Presario 2418 has that). Find a cheap USB hard disk enclosure and put the drive into that. Darryn Brooking wrote:
Its been awhile since I used Thunderbird, but I do remember that its not a simple case of copying the data to a fresh TB install via the FS, you'll need to do some sort if export/import.
As for copying the Thunderbird data, it is actually quite simple. Just copy the contents of the randomly-generated folder (e.g. /home/USER/.mozilla-thunderbird/ajkblsop.default) to another location. If restoring to a new installation of Thunderbird, start Thunderbird so that it creates the necessary folders, then copy the data back into the .default folder. I've done it this way for years, and it's never failed me. The same process can be used for Firefox. Sandy
On Wed, 2009-05-27 at 00:14 +1200, Andrew Crosby wrote:
hi
from what i recall it is a standard ide drive in a thin silver box, with a cool plug, you will need to remove these then it will IDE just fine
No - it's a whole different connector - narrower pin pitch than IDE. and these are pins sticking directly out of the end of the case. I don't know laptops, so I'm unsure whether this is a Toshiba proprietary connection, or some kind of 'mini-IDE'. Cheers David
Can you post a photo of it? CR -----Original Message----- From: wlug-bounces(a)list.waikato.ac.nz [mailto:wlug-bounces(a)list.waikato.ac.nz] On Behalf Of David McNab Sent: Wednesday, 27 May 2009 9:17 a.m. To: Waikato Linux Users Group Subject: Re: [wlug] OT: Help - disk crash On Wed, 2009-05-27 at 00:14 +1200, Andrew Crosby wrote:
hi
from what i recall it is a standard ide drive in a thin silver box, with a cool plug, you will need to remove these then it will IDE just fine
No - it's a whole different connector - narrower pin pitch than IDE. and these are pins sticking directly out of the end of the case. I don't know laptops, so I'm unsure whether this is a Toshiba proprietary connection, or some kind of 'mini-IDE'. Cheers David _______________________________________________ wlug mailing list | wlug(a)list.waikato.ac.nz Unsubscribe: http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/wlug -- This message was scanned by the Turnstone managed spam filter and is believed to be clean. __________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature database 4106 (20090526) __________ The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus. http://www.eset.com
No - it's a whole different connector - narrower pin pitch than IDE. and these are pins sticking directly out of the end of the case. I don't know laptops, so I'm unsure whether this is a Toshiba proprietary connection, or some kind of 'mini-IDE'.
Laptop drives have a mini-ide which is very standard. I have a USB drive adaptor which takes 3.5" IDE, 2.5" IDE and SATA drives, and I've done recovery jobs in the past. Feel free to give me a call if you like, 8551826 and I'll see what I can do.
Bruce Kingsbury wrote:
No - it's a whole different connector - narrower pin pitch than IDE. and these are pins sticking directly out of the end of the case. I don't know laptops, so I'm unsure whether this is a Toshiba proprietary connection, or some kind of 'mini-IDE'.
Laptop drives have a mini-ide which is very standard.
I have a USB drive adaptor which takes 3.5" IDE, 2.5" IDE and SATA drives, and I've done recovery jobs in the past. Feel free to give me a call if you like, 8551826 and I'll see what I can do.
Bruce is right. laptop ide is a smaller connector but still standard. And I've had lots of success extracting t'bird data in the past. J
On Wed, 2009-05-27 at 10:16 +1200, Bruce Kingsbury wrote
No - it's a whole different connector - narrower pin pitch than IDE. and these are pins sticking directly out of the end of the case. I don't know laptops, so I'm unsure whether this is a Toshiba proprietary connection, or some kind of 'mini-IDE'.
Laptop drives have a mini-ide which is very standard.
I have a USB drive adaptor which takes 3.5" IDE, 2.5" IDE and SATA drives, and I've done recovery jobs in the past. Feel free to give me a call if you like, 8551826 and I'll see what I can do.
Thank you so much everyone for your replies. The disk had a few lucid minutes today, sufficient to boot the laptop and allow me to mount the disk remotely and back up the vital directories. *phew* !! Cheers David
participants (7)
-
Andrew Crosby -
Bruce Kingsbury -
Cameron Rangeley -
Chakat Sandwalker -
Darryn Brooking -
David McNab -
James Pluck